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Ventures Platform, one of Africa’s most active seed-stage venture capital firms, has closed its second institutional fund at $84 million, just $23 million short of the total raised by all six African venture funds that closed in 2025. The fund, VP Pan-African Fund II, brings in four new institutional backers—the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; Norfund, Norway’s development finance institution; the Dutch family office Alphatron; and the Ashesi University Foundation—alongside a consortium of new family offices. The new investors join limited partners from the $64 million first close in November 2025: Nigeria’s iDICE programme; the International Finance Corporation; Standard Bank; British International Investment; Proparco through the EU-backed Choose Africa programme; Egypt’s micro, small and medium enterprise development agency (MSMEDA); AfricaGrow and Alder Tree Investment. The second fund will allow Ventures Platform to increase its stake in startups, as it is 1.8 times the size of Ventures Platform’s first institutional fund, which closed at $46 million in December 2022. Still, it will back roughly the same number of companies with much bigger cheques, targeting entry stakes of 10% to 12%. That ownership target reflects how African venture capital actually returns money, according to the firm. Secondary sales have become its most reliable route to liquidity. In a secondary sale, an early investor sells part or all of its stake to another investor, rather than waiting for the company to be acquired or go public. “What we’re looking to do is invest with much deeper conviction, so much larger ticket sizes,” Kola Aina, the firm’s founding partner, told TechCabal in an interview. “We’re looking to target entry ownerships of between 10 and 12%. And then we want to be able to have reserve capital to double down on our winners.” Ventures Platform now runs three entry strategies—pre-seed, seed, and pre-Series A—and has modelled a first cheque of up to $3 million, with an average ticket around $1.5 million, Aina said. Series A is where the fund stops, and it will follow companies it already backed into that round, but it rarely writes a first cheque in that round. The reason for the larger cheques stems from what Aina describes as the single biggest lesson from the last fund. “Entry ownership is everything, because the stock only gets pricier,” he said. “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 shared that the lesson was learnt after the firm’s liquidity events. Ventures Platform has leaned on secondary sales, and the arithmetic of a secondary punishes small stakes. If a venture capital firm owns 10% of a startup at pre-seed and builds to 15% or 20% by doubling down, it can sell half its position at a Series B, realise liquidity, and hold the rest for the upside. If it owns 3%, there is little to sell. That is also how Aina thinks about exits for Fund II. He still treats strategic sales as the goal and calls initial public offerings “somewhat mythical.” His firm’s research backs this thinking, as 73% of African venture exits occur through acquisitions. He expects secondaries to deliver a good share of the liquidity, given how early the firm enters. Without naming companies, he said Fund I already shows promising signs of liquidity outcomes in the near future. Where did the money come from? The fund’s limited partner base leans heavily on development finance and sovereign capital, which many investors say can shape a firm’s thesis. But Aina is quick to push back on that framing, pointing to Standard Bank, the largest bank in Africa, as a commercial LP, several European family offices, and a university foundation. Private capital, particularly European family offices, makes up a larger share of Fund II than it did of Fund I, he added. “Africa only gets less than 2% of venture capital, and we need a lot more venture capital, not less,” he said. “So personally, as a fund manager, I’ll take capital from anywhere I can get it, as long as it’s not misaligned with my strategy.” His broader argument is that a diverse LP pool is the only way to raise capital at scale for Africa right now because capital allocators still price in what he called an unjustified risk premium on the continent. “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 one he is proudest of is sovereign. iDICE, the Nigerian government’s digital and creative enterprise programme, has invested in Ventures Platform as an anchor LP, and according to Aina, it wrote one of the largest individual cheques in the fund. “The shape of the world today requires that countries line up behind the kinds of innovations that they believe that people need for sustainability,” he said, tying it to a world he sees becoming more insular. Ventures Platform is raising and deploying dollars in markets where the currency is eroding. Aina says the firm treats devaluation as a structural condition of investing in Africa, something to plan around instead of hedge against. The response is built into portfolio construction in three ways. Geographic diversification comes first, as the firm recently hired an investor in Abidjan for Francophone West Africa and has a team member in Cairo, giving the portfolio exposure to a basket of currencies. Second, the growth bar is set high enough that a company has to outpace devaluation and inflation to qualify. Third, the firm looks for businesses whose business model naturally generates foreign-exchange revenue or spreads risk across currencies. “We are assuming that we could have even more devaluation in the future, and we’ve baked that into our investing strategy,” he said, while noting that reforms in markets like Nigeria have delivered relative stability over the past couple of years. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve
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In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Howdy. Quick question: What does it actually take to build an AI product in Africa? In our latest episode of Headlines by TechCabal, hosts Eme Agbor and Muktar Oladunmade sat down with Saheed Azeez, founder of YarnGPT.ai, to get into the messy, fascinating business of building AI for the continent—finding the right data and figuring out what users actually want. There’s also a conversation about where that data comes from, and what happens when the Internet’s public conversations become part of the mix. Watch the episode on YouTube. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below. Subscribe Moniepoint is phasing out remittance product Courier platforms must submit data in Kenya MTN targets 30 million fintech users in Nigeria Nigeria is getting two new satellites World Wide Web 3 Opportunities Fintech Nigerian fintech unicorn Moniepoint is shutting down its remittance app Image Source: Tenor Less than 18 months after launching MonieWorld, Moniepoint, the Nigerian fintech, is pulling the plug on its United Kingdom remittance business. MonieWorld was its first major attempt to build a business outside its African markets, and Moniepoint spent millions of dollars setting up the infrastructure to make that expansion possible. Explain like I’m new here: Moniepoint launched MonieWorld in April 2025 to let people in the UK send money to Nigerian bank accounts directly from a MonieWorld account, a British bank account, cards, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. At launch, Moniepoint showed how quickly the service could move money, pitching competitive exchange rates that put it directly in the ring with other remittance startups, such as Grey and LemFi. Didn’t it spend millions? It absolutely did. Moniepoint incorporated its UK subsidiary, Moniepoint GB, in February 2024. By December that year, it had spent $1.26 million on administrative and infrastructure costs. It also invested $2.51 million in acquiring Bancom Europe, a UK Financial Conduct Authority-authorised electronic money institution (EMI). Regulatory filings show Moniepoint had earmarked $7.39 million for its UK expansion. The investment was meant to build the regulatory and technical machinery for a much bigger diaspora play, not just one remittance app. MonieWorld was doing well, right? Moniepoint says monthly transaction volume among its UK users grew 70%, and the UK-Nigeria remittance corridor was worth £2.76 billion ($3.69 billion) in 2021. Moniepoint hasn’t disclosed how much MonieWorld processed or how much revenue it generated. The company is not saying the product failed. Instead, it said a review of its portfolio and long-term priorities showed that its resources would be better deployed in its core African markets. New plan: go where the product is already working: In 2025, Moniepoint processed $294 billion in annualised transactions in Nigeria. In March 2026, it accelerated its data operations ambitions, acquiring Orda, a restaurant-management company that operated in Kenya and Nigeria. In Kenya, it acquired 78% of Sumac Microfinance Bank and appointed former Branch Kenya CEO Rose Muturi to lead the business. Moniepoint is signalling plans for a bigger, deeper African payments play, rather than spending another few million dollars convincing the UK that it needs another remittance app—where it likely has a weaker moat. Yet, a few questions remain: what happens to its MonieWorld tech and intellectual property (IP), and how will the acquired Bancom continue to operate—folded into Moniepoint’s existing operations or continue as a standalone business? Every business owner needs to watch this. The business questions you Google, answered by experts. Watch for free. Logistics & Transport Kenya wants parcel delivery operators to record and submit delivery details Image Source: Zikoko Memes Riders on ride-hailing and courier service apps such as Uber, Bolt, and Glovo in Kenya are about to become something more than delivery drivers. From September 20, they could also become part of the country’s surveillance and tax enforcement system. Kenya’s Communications Authority (CA), the country’s communications regulator, has introduced new rules requiring app-based courier platforms to verify and record parcel contents, as well as sender and recipient details. The records must be made available to the regulator, the taxman, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), and the police upon request. Why? The immediate goal is straightforward: stop drugs, firearms, and other prohibited goods from moving through the rapidly growing on-demand delivery economy. But this is a bigger shift. Explain like I’m new here: Kenya is not inventing parcel scrutiny from scratch. Postal and courier operators have long had to record what they carry and who is sending it. The big change is that Kenya has created a new “Courier Hailing Service Provider” category, complete with licencing fees, real-time parcel tracking, identity verification, and compensation rules for lost or damaged goods. Platform operators, such as Uber and Bolt, must pay KES 5,000 ($38.63) for licence application and KES 100,000 ($772.56) in initial fees to obtain a 10-year licence. For years, ride-hailing and delivery apps have treated parcel delivery as a natural extension of moving people around cities. Now Kenya is formally turning that business into a regulated courier category. It also lets regulators get a new window into a part of the informal economy that has largely lived inside apps. Online traders increasingly use riders to move goods to customers, and those transactions could now leave a much clearer regulatory trail. Zoom out: Africa’s super apps keep expanding into logistics because moving parcels is becoming as important as moving people. Kenya is now asking a different question: when a ride-hailing app becomes a courier company, what exactly should the government be allowed to see? The answer, at least in Kenya, is increasingly quite a lot. Moonshot is back! Moonshot 2026 is coming! Join us at the National Theatre, Lagos on October 28 & 29 for two days of tech and innovation. Grab your early bird tickets now and get 15% off. Fintech MTN wants 30 million Nigerians to use its fintech services Image Source: Giphy MTN already has Nigeria’s phone users. Now it
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Lisk, the Swiss-based blockchain infrastructure company, is shutting down its blockchain, ending a product expansion strategy that saw it back early-stage startups and build an ecosystem presence in Africa, as it pivots into financial software for businesses. The Lisk blockchain will be discontinued on October 31, 2026, while the company plans to wind down the Lisk decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), according to a statement published on Tuesday. Lisk will keep its native LSK token, which will continue to trade on other blockchain networks, specifically Ethereum and Base. The blockchain shutdown could end an important funding pipeline for African early-stage Web3 startups at a time when venture capital for the sector remains scarce, while also pulling back one of the ecosystem’s more active sources of capital and support. Africa’s blockchain startups raised $90.1 million in 2025, down 26.6% from the previous year, according to venture capital firm Crypto Valley VC (CV VC). Lisk had built a presence in Africa and other emerging markets, hiring regional leads and working with accelerators and developer-training programmes to deploy capital into early-stage companies. Its investments included Azza, a Nigerian WhatsApp-based stablecoin payments company, and ClapMi, a Nigerian social-finance platform backed through an accelerator. The ecosystem also supported other startups, including LovCash, a South African digital supply-chain startup, and Afrikabal, a Rwandan agritech marketplace, through Lisk’s EMpower Fund. The shutdown also marks a major retreat from Lisk’s attempt to build a blockchain ecosystem around the LSK token. Lisk said the chain failed to generate enough revenue to support the token, while grants and other incentives paid in LSK increased the supply of tokens in circulation and added selling pressure. “The current trajectory—marked by large LSK spendings, ongoing decline of LSK token price, operational fragmentation across many external stakeholders, and execution of non-core activities—needs to be corrected to significantly improve the Lisk project’s long-term standing,” Lisk said in a forum announcement. “As a result, we need to adjust our strategy to support the recent price development of the LSK token by focusing only on activities that actually contribute value to the LSK token and provide real utility for token holders.” According to DeFiLlama, a blockchain analytics platform, Lisk’s blockchain had over $139,000 in total value locked (TVL)—the value of digital assets deposited in Lisk’s decentralised applications on the network. Since January 2026, its TVL has steadily declined from $5.47 million, showing how sharply activity and liquidity on the blockchain have contracted. The current level is also the lowest since at least 2024. The blockchain currently holds over $587,000 in stablecoins. Decentralised exchange trading volume was about $1,700 over the latest 24 hours, while the network generated about $3.88 in fees, underscoring the little capital flow and economic activity the blockchain is currently supporting. The company’s pivot comes less than a year after blockchain founder Max Kordek returned as chief executive officer in December 2025 and began consolidating Lisk’s operations around a single focus. Kordek has since pushed the company toward its new financial software business, while winding down other initiatives and concentrating resources on Lisk. Launched in 2016, Lisk now wants to focus on a new product for finance teams managing money across companies, countries, and currencies. Lisk said its platform will bring bank accounts, stablecoins, payments, and approvals into one workspace. The product is currently in early access. As part of the transition, Lisk is proposing to burn 100 million LSK tokens held by the DAO. The move would cut the token’s total supply from 400 million to 300 million. Another 47 million LSK tokens from the DAO treasury would be transferred to Lisk Limited, the company behind the new business. The DAO’s governance contracts and forum would then be shut down. For LSK holders, the proposal would also remove the penalty for unstaking. Holders would still have to wait three days before their tokens become available. Users who hold LSK on the Lisk Chain will need to move their tokens to Ethereum before the blockchain closes. Lisk says bridging can take at least seven days, giving holders a reason to begin the process well before the October deadline. The company is also giving developers a route out: Lisk said it has worked with Celo, a layer-2 blockchain network, to create a migration path for projects built on the Lisk Chain. For Celo, the migration move could bring in developers and applications from Lisk as it expands its own ecosystem, deepening network effects. The LSK token will have a different role after the blockchain shuts down. Lisk said the token will be used for rewards and, soon, payments within its new financial platform. The proposal still needs community approval. If passed, it will end Lisk’s nearly decade-long run as a blockchain project and begin a new chapter as a financial software company. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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