Cathay Innovation in partnership with Tunisia-based private equity firm Africinvest is set to launch an African tech fund with the aim to raise $168 million.
According to Co-founder Denis Barrier, the joint venture dubbed Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund will concentrate on Series A to C-stage investments in African technology companies.
Barrier said, “We’ll look at investments across several countries in Africa. We’ll focus on areas such as fintech, logistics, AI, agtech and edutech.”
The Co-founder who could not ascertain when the fund would be closed did confirm investments could come as early as summer 2019. He also expresses high hope for a strong local showing for startups from across Africinvest’s 10 country offices in Abidjan, Algiers, Cairo, Casablanca, Dubai, Lagos, Nairobi, Paris, Port Louis, and Tunis. The firm will open an office in Johannesburg in the near future, according to a company release.
According to Techcrunch, in the private equity space, both founding companies of the new Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund carry considerable capital and scope. Co-founded by Denis Barrier and Mingpo Cai, Cathay Capital, the parent of Cathay Innovation, has $2.5 billion in assets under management and offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Africinvest’s 46 venture and debt investments span the brick and mortar side of many of the sectors the new tech fund looks to target, including education and banking.
Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund is expected to take advantage of the blurring lines between banks and fintech for sourcing deal flow.
The number of Africa-focused VC firms globally has also grown, topping 51 in 2018 per TechCrunch and Crunchbase research.
The Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund takes the number up to 52.
