Global Unicorn founders provide 59% of $205 million Norrsken22 African Tech Growth fund

Norrsken22, a Pan-African venture capital firm, announced that it has achieved the final close of its debut fund, raising a total of $205 million. The fund named the Norrsken22 African Tech Growth Fund, was launched in January last year after reaching the first close at $110 million.

Remarkably, around 59% of the funds were contributed by a group of 30 global unicorn founders. This includes Olugbenga Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave, Niklas Zennström, a co-founder of Skype, Jacob de Geer from iZettle, and Niklas Östberg, one of the founders of Delivery Hero.

Following the preliminary closing of the fund, Norrsken22 garnered interest from notable entities such as British International Investment (BII), International Finance Corporation (IFC), U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Standard Bank, and Norfund, who came on board as new limited partners.

Established in 2021 by founding partners Niklas Adalberth and Hans Otterling, managing partner Natalie Kolbe and general partners Ngetha Waithaka and Lexi Novitske, Norrsken22 has operational bases in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.

The Pan-African growth-stage fund has so far made five investments, including challenger bank TymeBank, B2B commerce retail platform Sabi, identity verification solution Smile Identity, auto financing platform Autochek and financing app for informal merchant communities Shara.

Norrsken22 aims to invest in around 20 startups. On average, the fund’s usual investment amount is about $10 million. However, in some cases, especially for follow-on rounds in specific portfolio firms, this can increase to as much as $16 million.