The French-African fund attracted investments from institutional investors, development banks, pension funds and European and African family offices.
AfricInvest Europe has achieved a first close of its third French-African fund (FFA3) of €50m, taking its assets under management to €150m. The strategy, which was first launched in 2017, backs profitable and fast-growing French small and medium-sized companies with a connection to Africa.
The new fund landed commitments from existing investors Bpifrance, Proparco, BNP Paribas, pan-African insurer Sanlam, the pension fund of the Central Bank of Kenya and Mauritian insurer Sicom. It also attracted new international institutional investors, including pension funds from Kenya, Africa-focused investment firm Group Equitane and European and African family offices.
FFA 3 plans to invest between €5m and €10m in a dozen companies, either via majority or minority stakes, alongside French and foreign private equity funds or directly with the founders or family executives and management teams. In addition to financial returns, FFA 3 will also keep track of the impact its investments have on the governance, transparency, employment creation and social and environmental values of its portfolio companies.
“Today the French African Funds have a unique investment strategy in the French small-to-mid cap private equity market. They bring real additionality to every portfolio company—particularly on their African development—alongside management teams and co-shareholders,” said Stéphane Colin and Khaled Ben Jennet, managing directors of AfricInvest Europe.
They went on to say that this investment thesis had been a key factor in landing new investments for the third fund.
Extensive network
AfricInvest is a unit of the AfricInvest Group, a pan-African investment platform which has raised $2.3bn (€1.9bn) of funds and closed over 230 transactions in sectors ranging from agribusiness to education and healthcare in just under 40 countries since its inception in 1994.
To date, the group’s French-African funds have made 18 investments in sectors such as health, vocational education, water management, distribution, travel services and and digital solutions. The management teams of its French portfolio companies have been supported by AfricInvest Group’s extensive network, which includes more than 100 investment experts based across nine countries in Africa including Algeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa.
