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Benjamin Toulouze, the head of corporate venture capital (CVC) at Axian Group, a multinational conglomerate, spent most of his career as a banker at Société Générale, France’s third-largest bank by total assets, working across France and several African markets. These days, he runs the CVC arm at AXIAN Investment, the investment arm of the Madagascar-headquartered AXIAN Group. Based in Dubai, his team of four is split between the UAE and Antananarivo. Toulouze got the green light to launch the corporate VC unit in late 2021, making it one of the first CVC vehicles from an African group. Four years in, AXIAN Investment has invested in 33 startups directly and holds stakes in 38 funds. Its direct portfolio includes MaxAB in Egypt, LipaLater in East Africa, Djamo in Côte d’Ivoire, Curacel, Anda in Angola, WideBot AI, and Nucleon Security in Morocco. Cheque sizes range from $50,000 for very early ideas up to $1.5 million in total exposure per company. AXIAN Group might not be a household name in African tech, but its footprint is significant. The pan-African conglomerate, founded half a century ago by the Hiridjee family, operates in 32 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean, with interests in telecoms, financial services, energy, real estate, and innovation. Its telecoms arm was ranked 74th on the Financial Times’ 2025 list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies. The firm takes minority stakes of 1% to 5%, deliberately small, Toulouze says, to avoid conflicts with AXIAN’s operating businesses and to keep trust with founders and co-investors. It has not yet had an exit, but as the parent group builds out data centre infrastructure through its STELLAR-IX brand across four markets, the CVC is leaning heavily into AI, cybersecurity, digital assets, and what Toulouze calls the “sovereignty issue”; African countries controlling their own data. In our conversation, Toulouze explains why his team chose Dubai and Madagascar over Lagos or Nairobi, how he pitches against the “CVCs move slowly” objection, why he thinks 1–5% stakes are an important feature, how he sources in North Africa after living there, and what he looks for in founders. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length. You started your career as a banker in France before moving into venture capital. How did that transition happen? I actually wanted to be an investor before being a banker. I started my career in France, in Paris, at a big audit firm doing acquisition due diligence, standard CPA work at the time for big French groups listed on the CAC 40. I worked for a fund that wanted to acquire a startup in France. That was in 2004. From then on, I wanted to be an investor. But for different reasons, I got very good opportunities as a banker, first in France and then in different countries. But the dream of being close to the entrepreneur was already there. I came to AXIAN in 2019 with this idea, but it was a bit early. At the end of 2021, we got a green light internally to launch one of the very first corporate VCs from an African group. I enjoy it a lot. You’re based in Dubai, AXIAN is in Madagascar. Those aren’t typical tech markets. Why not operate from Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, or Johannesburg? We are four at the corporate VC. Two of my teammates are still based in Madagascar, and we are two in Dubai. The point is, we are close to all the markets, including the big operational tech ecosystems in Africa. But the goal is to be everywhere, to be in touch with the entire ecosystem. That’s entrepreneurs, but also venture capitalists locally and internationally. The big tech companies and we have good examples like Flutterwave in Lagos, Moniepoint, FairMoney, or in Egypt, MNT-Halan, are based in their own countries, but they go beyond. That’s what we do. We’re ready to go and be as close as possible to different companies. All these big countries are our major zones of investment: Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, West Africa, and South Africa. We stay close to all these ecosystems, and we go on-site as soon as possible. We don’t see any issue with not being there permanently. We have a big network in different countries now, so it’s fine. A lot of corporate VC professionals I’ve spoken to say CVCs don’t move as fast as typical VCs or that there can be strings attached. How do you convince a founder that AXIAN is the best partner? We’ve already got these kinds of objections. The first part of my answer is that at AXIAN, we have a very strong entrepreneurship mindset. We are ready to decide quite quickly. Sometimes we move faster than the regular VCs. I don’t have any internal barriers to moving forward. If I need to get all my investment committee members for a decision, I can get one very quickly. Most of the time, when we take time, it’s because we are still questioning the business model and want to go deeper. In terms of governance and decision-making, we don’t have any issues. On convincing the entrepreneur, interestingly, entrepreneurs are really keen to add corporate VCs to their cap tables. Because we have a complementary value proposition to regular VCs. We know the operations, and most of the time we come from the operations themselves. We know the challenges of launching a company, of keeping it striving, of day-to-day operations, HR, accounting, organisation, and strategic vision. One of the values we bring is our experience as intrapreneurs or entrepreneurs who have led either divisions or departments within a very large group. The second thing is, as a corporate VC, we can bring potential new markets for the startup. It’s not a commitment, but when we invest in a company, we try to push for a solid partnership between the startup and the AXIAN Group—synergies, working together, going in the same direction. That’s why entrepreneurs are interested in working with us. We have a complementary value proposition,
Read MoreThis is Follow the Money, our weekly series that unpacks the earnings, business, and scaling strategies of African fintechs, financial institutions, companies, and governments. A new edition drops every Monday. When Fawry launched in 2008 as an e-payment switch connecting utility providers and telecom operators to consumers through retail agents, its pitch was simple: Egypt was a cash-heavy economy, and it wanted to digitise it. That limited scope has since expanded into a sprawling financial ecosystem that now serves nearly half of Egypt’s population, powering daily utility payments, loans, insurance, and other financial services. Fawry is now Egypt’s largest mobile money platform, and its revenue has equally grown. In 2017, the company earned EGP 432 million (*$24.2 million) in revenue and netted EGP 53.7 million (*$3 million) in profit. By 2025, its revenue has climbed to EGP 8.65 billion ($166.7 million), while net revenue reached EGP 3.1 billion ($59.7 million). After accounting for minority shareholders, Fawry’s take-home profit stood at EGP 2.89 billion ($55.7 million). Fawry now earns more than 20 times what it did in 2017. Fawry: The $1.3B Money Engines The $1.3B Money Loop Mapping Fawry’s Financial Evolution Select Reporting Period 2017: Start 2025: Scale Total Operating Revenue EGP 8.65B 1,900% increase since 2017 Annual Net Profit EGP 3.1B The Five Money Engines Data Note: 2025 figures represent total year projections and reported segment earnings from Fawry’s latest financial disclosures. Marketplace capitalization as of April 20, 2026. Source: Fawry Filings TechCabal Tools
Read MoreIf you ask Nelson Olanipekun how he built Citizens’ Gavel, the non-profit platform that uses AI to help people navigate Nigeria’s justice system, he would start with the story of an elderly woman whose case mirrored something much closer to home. In 2017, he was working as a lawyer in a private firm, whose major clients were banks, when the case landed on his desk. The retired woman had taken an unnamed bank to court after it refused to pay out her savings, plus interest. Nelson’s job was to defend the bank. As the case proceeded, it began to look familiar. Years earlier, Olanipekun’s father was caught in a similar ordeal in which the same procedural tactics nearly cost his family their home. He left the law firm after a few months. He had no plan in mind, but with only the conviction to change the system he was working within, a system, he believed, wasn’t built to protect the people it claimed to serve. Day 1: An idea that didn’t hold The gap in Nigeria’s justice system is significant. According to the World Justice Project, an international civil society organisation aiming to advance the rule of law globally, the country ranks 104th of 143 on civil justice and 90th of 143 on criminal justice, with cost, delay, effectiveness, corruption and discrimination among the biggest barriers. Within that context, Olanipekun began to think about how technology could be used to address some of these gaps. His first idea for an access-to-justice platform powered by technology was not Citizens’ Gavel. He called it Open Judiciary, and it was designed to fight corruption within the judicial system. The idea was built on stare decisis, a legal doctrine that requires lower courts to follow established precedents, especially from superior courts. According to Olanipekun, Open Judiciary was intended to track and monitor whether judgments from lower courts aligned with a precedent from higher courts. In 2017, he joined the accelerator programme at CivicHive, an initiative focused on startups using technology to drive civic engagement. It was during one of the pitch sessions that he was asked to refine his idea. Instead of trying to analyse the system from the outside, he began to think about how to intervene directly and connect people to lawyers to enable them to understand the justice system. That became Citizens’ Gavel, an access-to-justice platform launched the same year. Gavel’s early activities were mainly carried out on social media. On those platforms, people would reach out to organisations to report incidents. Olanipekun said he would pick up cases, follow up on them, and in many instances, travel to locations himself to intervene. By 2018, lawyers who saw the work based on people’s reactions on social media joined Citizens’ Gavel as volunteers. Funding at this stage was little. The CivicHive accelerator provided a fellowship stipend that he used for rent and volunteer support, and there was still no full clarity on what Gavel would become. “I didn’t quite understand the full extent of what I was working on, the full extent of the problem,” he said. “Nothing was clear initially, but I felt that it was unique because I was using technology.” Day 500: Working the #EndSARS movement Olanipekun noted that by early 2019, Citizens’ Gavel’s activities began unfolding in waves. Across Nigeria, there were repeated reports of police brutality, particularly involving the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the police that had long been accused of extortion, unlawful arrests, and violence. Each time there was an incident of police brutality, people would go online to make a post and tag organisations to get help. In October 2020, these scattered incidents became a nationwide youth-led protest, tagged #EndSARS, demanding accountability, reform, and an end to systemic abuse. Protesters who needed legal support, and families who were trying to get their loved ones released, were among the people Olanipekun said reached out to the organisation. According to him, the cases Citizen’s Gavel handled at that time multiplied. Citizen’s Gavel was not alone in that moment. A loose network of organisations, including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) Nigeria, a human rights advocacy organisation; Feminist Coalition, a women’s rights advocacy group that led emergency response, fundraising, and logistic support for protesters; and Mentally Aware NG, a mental health nonprofit that offered free therapy for illegally detained and harassed protesters, were among the organisations that assisted during that period. To respond to the influx of cases, Citizens’ Gavel had to operate like an emergency system. Olanipekun said that Gavel’s network of volunteer lawyers expanded to 250 across the country, with rapid response legal teams, who could get to police stations and engage authorities quickly, positioned in Lagos and Abuja. According to him, Gavel secured the release of detainees and worked on cases that led to compensation for victims. “That year alone, we were involved in over 400 intervention cases specifically tailored to people who were arrested and detained during the EndSARS protest,” he said. As the cases increased for Gavel’s team, so did the risks. Olanipekun recalled that they received threats and intimidation calls to stop litigation. He also described that witness protection became a part of their job. “#EndSARS was the hardest. It was emotionally draining,” he said. “I had to run away from the country because of the blowback.” By the time the protests slowed, Citizens’ Gavel had operationally gone through a pressure and scale different from what it started as. That experience shaped what it built next. Day 1000: Building structure around scale Post 2020, Olanipekun described activities at Citizens’ Gavel as revolving around putting more structures following the deluge of cases the team handled during the protests. The organisation built products that could handle parts of the process without needing a lawyer at every step. There was Justice Clock in 2021, designed for tracking case files and managing cases launched by the Lagos State Government. There was also Filer, which Olanipekun described as a platform that
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