Seedstars Collaborates with First Growth Ventures to Invest $100m in African tech startups

Seedstars announced that it would launch a $100 million fund to invest in African startups in collaboration with Paris-based First Growth Ventures. The Chief Investment Officer, Charlie Graham-Brown announced this at the Seedstars Summit held at the SwissTech Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“The strategy that we’re developing now and have started working on is to have a fund per region of around $100-million to be able to do deals in Series-A and Series-B,” Charlie Graham-Brown announced.

Graham-Brown told Ventureburn that the aim is for the fund to invest in 30 to 40 companies by the end of this year. The fund is for early-stage investments from $250,000 to $5 million in “the most promising innovative ventures across sectors and countries”. He said that Seedstars would soon reveal more details of the countries the fund would focus on.

Since inception in 2013, Seedstars has invested in ticket sizes of between $50,000 and $500,000 in 40 companies. Four of these startups were set up by Seedstars itself through its venture-building team in Nigeria that focuses on the fintech sector and four other ventures in Ivory Coast focusing on edutech.

De Tonnac said to ensure there’s sufficient talent for the startups it builds in Nigeria, Seedstars runs an academy programme to train potential employees who can be placed in its portfolio companies.

The fund accounts for the first of a series of regional funds Seedstars will launch in the coming years to continue its mission of accelerating and supporting entrepreneurs at all stages.

“We are very proud to be supporting all these entrepreneurs and we’ll continue to expand our activities with the launch of new acceleration and training programmes across the world. We’ll also be announcing more funding to these unbelievable entrepreneurs that we have seen on stage all week,” said Pierre-Alain Masson, Co-founder at Seedstars.