Ventures Platform has closed its second institutional fund at $84 million, nearly twice the size of its first fund, as the African venture capital firm prepares to write bigger cheques into early-stage startups.
The new fund, VP Pan-African Fund II, is just $23 million short of the total raised by all six African venture funds that closed in 2025.
The fund has attracted four new institutional investors: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Norway’s development finance institution Norfund, Dutch family office Alphatron, and the Ashesi University Foundation. A group of new family offices has also joined the fund.
They join investors from Ventures Platform’s $64 million first close in November 2025, including Nigeria’s iDICE programme, the International Finance Corporation, Standard Bank, British International Investment, Proparco through the EU-backed Choose Africa programme, Egypt’s MSMEDA, AfricaGrow, and Alder Tree Investment.
Bigger cheques, fewer companies
Fund II gives Ventures Platform more firepower, but the firm does not plan to dramatically increase the number of startups it backs.
Instead, it plans to invest more money in roughly the same number of companies.
The firm’s first institutional fund closed at $46 million in December 2022. With Fund II now 1.8 times larger, Ventures Platform plans to take bigger ownership positions in the startups it backs, targeting 10% to 12% at entry.
For founding partner Kola Aina, that strategy comes from one of the biggest lessons from the firm’s first fund: owning enough of a company matters.
“Entry ownership is everything, because the stock only gets pricier,” Aina said.
Ventures Platform has seen this play out through its liquidity events. The firm has increasingly relied on secondary sales, where an early investor sells some or all of its stake to another investor instead of waiting for an acquisition or IPO.
A larger initial stake gives the firm more room to sell part of its position later while keeping some exposure to the company’s future growth.
“If you’re coming into the company, you’re super supportive of the company, but then you don’t own enough of the company; at exits, it hurts when you get there,” Aina said.
Up to $3 million per startup
Ventures Platform now invests across three stages: pre-seed, seed, and pre-Series A.
The firm can write an initial cheque of up to $3 million, although its average investment will be around $1.5 million, according to Aina.
Series A is effectively the fund’s cut-off point. Ventures Platform will continue supporting companies it has already backed when they reach Series A, but it rarely makes a Series A investment as a new investor.
The firm’s approach is built around backing its strongest companies with follow-on capital rather than spreading smaller cheques across a much larger portfolio.
Secondary sales are becoming important
For African venture capital firms, getting money back to investors can be difficult. IPOs remain rare, while acquisitions are still the most common exit route.
Ventures Platform’s own research found that 73% of African venture exits happen through acquisitions.
Aina, however, expects secondary transactions to account for a meaningful share of the firm’s liquidity because Ventures Platform invests so early.
He describes IPOs as “somewhat mythical” and says strategic acquisitions remain the ultimate goal.
The firm is already seeing potential liquidity opportunities from its first fund, although Aina did not name the companies involved.
Who invested in the new fund?
Ventures Platform’s investor base is still heavily made up of development finance institutions and sovereign-backed investors. But Fund II has attracted more private capital, particularly from European family offices.
Aina argues that having a mix of investors is important, especially when raising capital for Africa remains difficult.
Standard Bank, one of Africa’s largest banks, is among the commercial investors, while family offices and the Ashesi University Foundation add more private capital to the mix.
“Africa only gets less than 2% of venture capital, and we need a lot more venture capital, not less,” Aina said.
He believes investors continue to attach an unnecessarily high risk premium to African markets.
“If you actually look at the performance, Africa is not any more risky than some of these other markets. But the reality is that there is a perception issue.”
The firm is particularly proud of having Nigeria’s iDICE programme as an anchor investor. According to Aina, the government-backed programme wrote one of the largest individual cheques into the fund.
For him, government participation is increasingly important as countries look to support industries and technologies they see as critical to their economic future.
Building around currency risk
Ventures Platform is also investing in markets where currency depreciation remains a major challenge.
Rather than treating devaluation as an unexpected risk, the firm has built it into its investment strategy.
One part of that strategy is geographic diversification.
The firm recently hired an investor in Abidjan to cover Francophone West Africa and has a team member in Cairo. This gives the portfolio exposure to different markets and currencies instead of concentrating its bets in one economy.
The second part is choosing companies that can grow faster than inflation and currency depreciation.
The firm also looks for startups that earn revenue in foreign currencies or have business models that naturally spread currency risk.
“We are assuming that we could have even more devaluation in the future, and we’ve baked that into our investing strategy,” Aina said.
For Ventures Platform, the message behind Fund II is straightforward: back fewer companies more aggressively, own more of them, and have enough capital to support the winners as they grow.
With $84 million now committed, the firm has more room to put that strategy into practice across Africa.