Constant Ventures eyes African fintechs in US$100 million funding

According to CB Insights’ latest Venture Trends report, African startups attracted a mere 1% of all funding last quarter, with a 2% deal share. According to Briter Bridges, $1.77 billion of VC funding went into African tech in Q1 2022. That’s close to the $1.8 billion estimate of Africa-focused newsletter The Big Deal, but much higher than CB Insights’ tally — $923 million.

By Newsroom On May 30, 2022

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By Conrad Onyango

Constant Ventures, a part of the Constant Group is raising a $100 million venture capital fund to invest across a range of technology start-ups with a focus on financial inclusion, education and healthcare.

Investee companies will initially be located across Nigeria and Ghana, with the fund set to target the wider West Africa region.

Recent advances in digital information technology provide an opportunity to both build and scale solutions to everyday challenges faced by millions of Africans – in particular, the aggregation of fragmented value chains, the formalisation of large sectors of the continent’s economy and the provision of much-needed access to financial services for both consumers and businesses.

The Constant Ventures fund has a unique structure that enables investment either directly in talented entrepreneurs and compelling start-ups across West Africa or through its proprietary venture studio, which serves as a catalyst to combine best-in-class entrepreneurs, ideas and capital to quickly build winning start-ups.

Constant Ventures created the fund on the back of its successful track record as an angel investor, as well as a respected developer of technology businesses. To-date, it has invested US$3.2 million in nine Nigerian start-ups*, with a return of 5.6x, which is projected to return 15x after the next funding round.

“We are very excited to be announcing this fund today. It has been a decade in the making, the result of deep-dive research and due diligence in anticipation of this moment when we knew that advances in information technology would enable start-ups across West Africa to commercially address real societal needs,” said Ike Echeruo, Chairman of the Constant Group and co-founder and Managing Partner of Constant Ventures.