Partech Africa Fund seeks to support innovative budding tech startups with a demonstrated growth potential. The Fund has just received a significant boost in its endeavors from the African Development Bank (AfDB), which has approved an EUR7 million ($8 million) equity investment into the Fund.
Partech Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture fund founded in 1982 and currently boasts of teams spread across San Francisco, Paris, Berlina, and Dakar. The Fund announced its first round of funding in January this year, in which it secured EUR57 million ($ 70 million). The fund has a target of raising EUR100 million ($122 million).
With the funding from the AfDB, Partech Venture is fast closing in on that target. Before the AfDB investment, the Fund also got an undisclosed investment from L’Oreal (a French cosmetics firm) last month.
The AfDB was ropped into the Partech Venture Fund mission through its own ‘Boost Africa Program’ which the bank feels the Fund is aligned with when it comes to supporting startups on the African continent. The bank is also to get a seat on the Fund’s Advisory Board.
The AfDB says the Fund’s mission in Africa is aligned with its own mission of supporting high growth innovative startups on the continent.
“By participating in the fund, the bank will support the successful launch of the first large venture capital fund covering four key regions in Africa, supporting entrepreneurs to leverage additionality and technology to develop affordable, user-centered products and services and market-driven complementarity,” said Stefan Nalletamby, the director of the AfDB’s private sector, infrastructure, and industrialization department.