TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund gets a $31M boost, plans to expand investment portfolio across SSA
Africa-focused Venture capital firm, TLcom, has closed an additional $31M for its TIDE Africa Fund–boosting its SSA-focused round to $71 million–to expand its investment portfolio across Sub-Saharan Africa.
TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund is aimed at investing further in up to six pan-African companies–from seed to growth stage– over a year and a half. Follow-on rounds will also be injected into TLcom’s existing portfolio company.
International interests that participated in the latest rounds include UK-based CDC, IFC as well as South Africa’s Sango Capital and Belgium’s BIO.
Being one of the active fundings heavily investing in promising companies across, TIDE Africa is one of the most active funds operating in Sub Saharan Africa since its first close in 2017, with 6 companies in its portfolio, including Andela, Kobo360, Twiga Foods, Ajua, Terragon Group and uLesson. Over the last 12 months, rounds led or co-led by TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund have raised over $150mn for African startups.
Expressing excitement to bring onboard new strategic institutional investors, Maurizio Caio, Nairobi based Founder and Managing Partner at TLcom says “Attracting international investment from such renowned backers into the African VC space reflects the recognition of the work the TLcom team has already achieved in connecting some of the continent’s strongest entrepreneurs with the capital they need to scale. It is time for Africa VC to graduate into a world-class asset class that can generate massive returns. ”
Launched in 1999, the 20+-year old Venture Capital firm currently has in excess of $200M under management across primary and secondary funds. The highly experienced team, with Senior Partner Dr Omobola Johnson based in Nigeria, Partner Andreata Muforo in Kenya, and Ido Sum in the UK, has consistently leveraged its on-the-ground presence in Africa to develop a broad portfolio ranging from agriculture to education, data analytics and logistics, focusing exclusively on technology-enabled services and innovation for SSA, across all stages of the venture capital cycle.
Nick O’Donohoe, Chief Executive of CDC, the UK’s publicly owned impact investor and largest investor in the Fund, said “The investment in TLcom provides a critical foundation in our endeavour to plug the funding gap for early-stage companies and bolster entrepreneurship across Africa. CDC is excited to work with TLcom, leveraging technology and innovation to intervene in critical sectors such as education or agriculture and helping to address important consumer and business challenges.”
Omobola Johnson, TLcom’s Senior Partner and Nigeria’s former Minister of ICT concludes, “We are bullish on supporting and investing in tech-enabled African companies due to the opportunities for value generation that they provide. We are known for being an entrepreneur-led VC firm who values Africa-centric innovation, strong leadership teams and businesses who are solving real challenges in the market.”
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