Ventures Platform Secures $64M for Second Fund, Marking Nigeria’s Historic First Government VC Investment

Ventures Platform, one of Africa’s most prolific early-stage venture capital firms, has successfully raised $64 million to date for its second institutional fund, with ambitions to reach a final close of $75 million, founding partner Kola Aina revealed to TechCrunch. The Lagos-based firm’s fundraising achievement stands as a significant milestone not only for the organization itself but for the broader African venture capital ecosystem, particularly given the challenging fundraising environment that emerging managers globally have faced over the past two years.

The most remarkable aspect of this fundraise is the participation of the Nigerian government through its Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) program. This marks an unprecedented moment in Nigerian investment history—the first time the federal government has committed capital to a venture capital fund. The symbolic and practical importance of this decision cannot be overstated, especially considering that Nigeria’s rapidly expanding startup ecosystem has produced more unicorns—privately held companies valued at over $1 billion—than any other African nation.

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A Blue-Chip Roster of Limited Partners

Beyond the historic government participation, Ventures Platform has assembled an impressive roster of limited partners for Fund II. The investor base includes heavyweight development finance institutions and impact investors such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector arm; British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution; and Proparco, the French development finance institution focused on private sector financing in emerging markets.

The fund has also attracted commercial financial institutions including Standard Bank, one of Africa’s largest banking groups, as well as the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (MSMEDA) from Egypt, and AfricaGrow, a fund of funds focused on supporting African fund managers. European family offices such as Alder Tree Investment have joined the cap table, alongside prominent global figures from the technology ecosystem, including Michael Seibel, former CEO of the renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Perhaps most tellingly, Aina reports that 70% of the limited partners from Ventures Platform’s first fund chose to return for the second vehicle—a strong vote of confidence in the firm’s strategy, execution, and returns. In an industry where repeat backing is considered one of the most reliable indicators of fund manager quality, this retention rate speaks volumes about investor satisfaction.

Building on a Strong Foundation

Since its founding in 2016, Ventures Platform has methodically built a reputation as one of the most effective talent-spotters in Nigeria’s competitive startup landscape. The firm has demonstrated an uncanny ability to identify breakout companies at their earliest stages, often investing before other institutional investors recognize the opportunity. This track record of early-stage pattern recognition is precisely what the firm hopes to replicate as it expands into new African markets.

Ventures Platform launched its first institutional fund in 2022, a $46 million vehicle focused primarily on pre-seed and seed-stage investments. That fund targeted the riskiest but potentially most rewarding stage of venture investing—backing founders who often have little more than a compelling vision, a prototype, and early signs of market traction. The firm’s willingness to take these early bets has positioned it as a go-to partner for ambitious African entrepreneurs.

With the second fund, however, Ventures Platform is evolving its strategy in important ways. While maintaining its commitment to early-stage investing, the firm will now pursue Series A opportunities as well. More significantly, Aina emphasized that the firm plans to invest “with more conviction,” seeking larger ownership stakes in its portfolio companies. This strategic shift addresses a critical gap in the African venture landscape: the growing scarcity of Series A capital.

Addressing the Series A Crunch

For African startups, securing Series A funding has become increasingly challenging following years of retreat by Silicon Valley firms that had previously shown enthusiasm for the continent’s tech ecosystem. During the peak funding years of 2020 and 2021, international venture capital flooded into African startups, with many Bay Area firms making their first investments on the continent. However, as global venture markets contracted in 2022 and 2023, many of these international investors pulled back, leaving a meaningful capital gap precisely at the Series A stage.

This pullback has created what some observers call the “Series A valley of death”—a situation where promising startups that successfully raised seed capital find themselves unable to secure the growth capital needed to scale their operations. Ventures Platform’s decision to move into Series A investing with larger check sizes directly addresses this market failure, potentially providing a crucial bridge for its most successful portfolio companies.

The firm’s geographic expansion strategy also reflects sophisticated thinking about deal flow and competitive positioning. While Ventures Platform plans to deepen its already substantial presence in Nigeria, it has begun establishing footholds in Francophone West Africa and North Africa—regions that have historically received less venture attention than Anglophone West Africa. The firm has already made several investments in these markets, recognizing that establishing a presence early can provide access to promising deals before competition intensifies.

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A Portfolio of Market-Creating Innovation

To date, Ventures Platform has deployed capital across more than 90 startups throughout the African continent. The firm describes most of its investments as “painkiller” businesses—a venture capital term referring to companies that address acute, urgent problems rather than offering incremental improvements. These portfolio companies span sectors including financial technology, health technology, agricultural technology, educational technology, and artificial intelligence.

Critically, Aina emphasizes that Ventures Platform focuses on companies solving for “non-consumption”—businesses that serve markets where people currently have little to no access to a particular service. This approach, popularized by innovation theorist Clayton Christensen, focuses on creating entirely new markets rather than competing for share in existing ones.

The portfolio includes several standout success stories that illustrate this market-creating approach. Moniepoint, which has achieved unicorn status with backing from Visa, provides digital banking services to small businesses across Nigeria. Paystack, which was acquired by payments giant Stripe in 2020 for over $200 million, revolutionized online payments for African merchants.

“Many small businesses couldn’t sell beyond their immediate vicinity before Paystack because they couldn’t accept online payments,” Aina explained. “Moniepoint, on the other hand, has driven financial inclusion to the nooks and crannies of this country. That’s market creating innovation.”

Other notable portfolio companies demonstrate the breadth of Ventures Platform’s investment thesis. LemFi, a remittance application backed by growth equity firm Left Lane Capital, simplifies cross-border money transfers for the African diaspora. SeamlessHR, which has received support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides human resources management software tailored to African companies. OmniRetail, backed by Norfund, digitizes informal retail supply chains. Raenest, a fintech company backed by QED Investors, offers innovative financial services. And Remedial Health tackles pharmaceutical supply chain challenges in the healthcare sector.

Navigating Headwinds: The Exit Question

Despite the acceleration of innovation and the substantial capital flows into Africa’s technology ecosystem—which has attracted over $12 billion in venture funding since 2015 according to various market reports—stakeholders are increasingly concerned about a critical issue: the shortage of exits and liquidity events. This concern has cast a shadow over the ecosystem’s otherwise impressive growth trajectory.

The exit challenge is multifaceted. African tech companies have achieved relatively few initial public offerings, and acquisitions, while growing in number, haven’t yet reached the scale or frequency seen in more mature venture markets. Without clear paths to liquidity, venture capital investors struggle to return capital to their own limited partners, which in turn makes fundraising for subsequent funds more difficult.

This reality has particularly impacted emerging managers—newer fund managers without long track records—who collectively have faced challenging fundraising conditions globally over the past two years. Institutional investors, spooked by poor returns from some venture funds and facing their own allocation constraints, have become more selective, often favoring established brand-name firms over younger, unproven managers.

Ventures Platform, however, has managed to buck this trend, successfully attracting both local and international limited partners for two funds despite the broader market uncertainty. Aina attributes this success to several factors. “We have LPs who understand how venture ecosystems in other markets have developed and know we’ll get there in the long term,” he said, referring to investors who can contextualize Africa’s venture market within the longer arc of venture capital development seen in markets like Southeast Asia or Latin America.

Perhaps more concretely, Ventures Platform has already returned capital to investors. The firm has recycled capital from four out of its six vintages (including five angel syndicates) that were raised between 2016 and 2022. Aina also claims that the first institutional fund ranks among the top performers globally based on Total Value to Paid-In capital (TVPI) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) metrics for its vintage year—strong quantitative evidence that the firm’s investment approach generates returns.

Africa’s Long-Term Investment Thesis

When addressing questions about exits and the continent’s funding slowdown—venture investment in Africa fell from approximately $5 billion in 2021 to roughly $2 billion in 2024—Aina pivots to Africa’s fundamental long-term potential. He describes the continent as offering the “purest asymmetric play for non-consensus alpha,” venture capital jargon that translates to high-risk, high-upside bets that most investors haven’t yet recognized.

“If you’re a global capital allocator looking for true diversification, Africa is the place,” Aina argued. “By 2050, one in four humans will be African. Our GDP growth rate is double that of the U.S., and yet most of the value is still offline. The opportunity is huge if you have the patience and the local context.”

The demographic argument is compelling. According to United Nations projections, Africa’s population is expected to more than double from approximately 1.4 billion today to over 2.5 billion by 2050, representing more than 25% of the global population. This growing population is also urbanizing rapidly and becoming increasingly connected through mobile technology and internet access.

The economic fundamentals support this optimism as well. While GDP growth rates vary significantly across African countries, the continent as a whole has consistently grown faster than developed economies. Moreover, as Aina notes, most economic activity remains offline or informal, suggesting enormous potential for digital transformation and formalization.

The infrastructure gap that might seem like a disadvantage in some contexts actually creates opportunities for leapfrogging—adopting newer technologies without being constrained by legacy systems. Mobile money adoption in Africa, for instance, far outpaced what occurred in Western markets, precisely because traditional banking infrastructure was limited. This pattern has repeated across multiple sectors, from solar energy adoption to digital education platforms.

The Path Forward

Ventures Platform’s successful fundraise, particularly with the Nigerian government’s participation, represents more than just one firm’s achievement. It signals a potential turning point in how African governments view their role in nurturing innovation ecosystems. If this inaugural government investment proves successful, it could establish a template for other African nations to follow, creating a virtuous cycle of domestic capital supporting local innovation.

The firm’s evolution from pure seed-stage investing to including Series A deals also reflects the natural maturation of Africa’s venture ecosystem. As the earliest wave of startups funded in the mid-2010s scale and require growth capital, having local investors who can support them through subsequent rounds becomes increasingly critical. Ventures Platform’s strategy positions it to capture value across multiple stages while providing crucial continuity for founders.

For the broader African tech ecosystem, the success of funds like Ventures Platform in attracting international institutional capital despite global headwinds demonstrates that the investment thesis remains compelling to sophisticated investors. The 70% LP retention rate suggests that actual results—not just hype—are driving continued commitment.

As Africa’s venture capital ecosystem continues to mature, firms like Ventures Platform that combine local expertise with institutional rigor will likely play increasingly central roles. The next several years will test whether Africa’s undeniable demographic and economic potential can translate into venture-scale returns that satisfy both impact-oriented development finance institutions and return-focused commercial investors. If Ventures Platform’s track record is any indication, there’s reason for optimism about the continent’s innovation economy.

Conclusion: A Pivotal Moment

The closure of Ventures Platform’s $64 million second fund arrives at a pivotal moment for African venture capital. Global macro conditions remain challenging, with higher interest rates making venture capital’s long-duration, high-risk profile less attractive to many institutional allocators. Yet precisely because many investors have retreated, opportunities may be more attractive for those with conviction and local expertise.

The Nigerian government’s decision to invest represents a vote of confidence not just in Ventures Platform but in the model of using venture capital to drive economic development and job creation. As governments across the continent search for strategies to harness their youthful, growing populations’ potential, venture capital may increasingly be seen as a tool for economic policy rather than merely a private sector activity.

For entrepreneurs across Africa, the successful fundraise means another experienced, well-capitalized partner available to support their ambitions. For the venture capital industry globally, it provides another data point that emerging markets can generate institutional-quality returns despite—or perhaps because of—their unique challenges.

As Ventures Platform deploys this capital over the coming years, its investments will test key questions about African innovation: Can local startups achieve the scale needed to generate venture-sized returns? Will exit opportunities materialize to provide liquidity? Can African entrepreneurs build globally competitive companies while solving distinctly local problems?

The answers to these questions will shape not just Ventures Platform’s returns but the trajectory of an entire continent’s innovation economy. With $64 million in fresh capital, strong institutional backing, and a proven investment approach, Ventures Platform is well-positioned to help write the next chapter of Africa’s technology story.

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By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

7th November, 2025