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Rosanne Whalley has been investing in Africa for 17 years. In that time, she has done early-stage equity, growth-stage equity, debt, fund investments, and mezzanine structures across several African countries. She has seen what works and what does not. She believes that the financial performance of Africa’s investment industry has been mixed, and most investors are only now starting to reassess how capital should be allocated on the continent. Whalley thinks debt funding is the best option for investors and founders. Whalley runs AHL Venture Partners, a Nairobi-based impact-focused venture capital firm founded in 2007 by a high-net-worth European family that wanted to support African entrepreneurs. For over a decade, AHL did a bit of everything, issuing equity cheques, fund commitments, and debt deals while building networks and learning the hard way what the continent rewards and what it punishes. Around 2020, the family behind AHL gave Whalley and her team a rare gift in African institutional investing: a blank canvas. No limited partner mandates. No sector restrictions. They gave her just one question: What can make money and have a durable impact? The answer they arrived at was private credit. Debt recycles faster than equity in African markets, the returns are more predictable, and the liquidity profile lets you fund more businesses over time, Whalley said. AHL cleaned up its legacy equity portfolio and reoriented around lending to scaling businesses with strong cash flows and management teams that do not go quiet when things get hard. The firm has now invested in over 35 businesses and is raising a dedicated debt fund to scale the strategy. But Whalley’s read on the broader market is sharp. She thinks impact investing has underdelivered financially, that development finance institutions treat private credit managers more as competition than partners, and that loading early-stage founders with sustainability and gender requirements before they have found product-market fit does more harm than good. In our conversation, Whalley and Kerry Nasidai, AHL’s investment manager, walk through why they abandoned equity for debt, how they price currency risk when lending in dollars in Africa, what red flags make Whalley walk away from a founder, and where she thinks African private credit is heading. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. AHL moved from equity-type investments to debt. Why did that transition happen? Kerry Nasidai: We’re in a unique position in that we have quite a long history. We were founded back in 2007 by a high-net-worth European family who had done some work on the continent and were thinking about how they could support the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa. At that initial stage, it was very much about supporting the ecosystem from different angles. That meant doing some very early-stage equity investments, but also debt investments, mezzanine-type products, and even fund investments. We did that for years, building our networks and expertise with each new deal. Then, around 2020, there was an internal reframing of how we make all the impact we are creating sustainable. That ended up looking like: can we shift our focus more toward debt investments? There were a couple of reasons. Debt is more liquid and still very important to the market, but you can also be more prudent in how you deploy capital. The liquidity profile is quite different, and the returns profile is also quite different from equity in the African market. From 2020, Rosanne took over with this new strategy, which was primarily increasing our debt investments but also helping to clean up our equity and fund portfolio. The aim was to create a more sustainable structure for AHL because with more sustainability, more money comes back in, and we are able to support more businesses across the continent. Now we are at a very interesting stage where we are looking to set up a separate fund, building on the expertise we have developed since 2007 and the strong track record we have shown on debt. There has been more interest from the initial family that set up the foundation capital, but also from other investors we have interacted with. We are now in the process of beginning to close another fund, focused purely on debt. Rosanne Whalley: I have had the opportunity of investing across the region for the last 17 years, across everything from early-stage and growth-stage equity, debt, and fund investments. We had a very unique opportunity in 2019 and 2020, where we did not have a top-down strategy or mandate. If you think about it, most funds are dictated by their source of capital. LP capital tends to drive behaviour and strategy, especially in Africa, where a lot of capital is still development finance institution (DFI) and impact-driven. In our case, the family behind AHL essentially said: you as a team, work out what can make money and have a durable impact. That forces you to step out of “this is what I need to do” and instead think about what works, based on everything you have seen and where the market actually is. Because we had experience across fund investments, equity, and debt, and we were seeing how each was performing, we could assess what truly works for entrepreneurs, investors, and capital allocators in the region. That’s how we landed on the private credit strategy. Even within private credit, we’re not a typical lender. We want to partner with strong teams building defensible business models at scale and then finance them over a long-term journey. Over that journey, they will need different types of capital, like senior secured working capital, mezzanine financing, or bridge funding, at different points. What’s been a privilege at AHL is that we’ve been able to build this strategy bottom-up. That’s often not the case. Usually, strategies are dictated top-down. I think that’s been a key part of our ability to pivot and execute in a way that is actually working and now scaling. You’ve been investing in Africa for two decades. What’s the biggest structural shift you’ve seen
Read MoreSirMapy and Co. decentralised autonomous organisation (SMC DAO), a community of crypto traders and investors that backs and builds Web3 products, has acquired Nigerian crypto startup Bread Africa in an undisclosed all-cash six-figure deal. The deal adds to a growing list of acquisitions among local crypto startups and reflects the steady consolidation underway in Nigeria’s digital asset ecosystem. In 2025, crypto startup Roqqu acquired Flitaa, an exchange platform with operations in Nigeria and Kenya, for an undisclosed amount. In Bread Africa’s case, the acquisition deepens an existing relationship between the buyer and the founder: its chief executive officer, Iam Etefia, previously sold two earlier ventures, Peniwallet and Peniremit, to SMC DAO in 2023 for $250,000. Founded in 2025, Bread Africa operates as a web-based crypto application that allows users to convert digital assets into local currency. The product stripped away the typical barriers associated with crypto transactions, with no sign-ups, no wallet connections, and no Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, offering what Etefia describes as a “frictionless” experience. Behind that simplicity was a more complex setup. Bread Africa ran on several blockchains, including Base and Solana, but ultimately settled transactions in compliant naira (cNGN), the naira-backed stablecoin, on Base to make transactions faster and cheaper. The platform converted crypto funds into cNGN and paid them directly into users’ bank accounts, enabling near-instant crypto-to-fiat conversions. Bread Africa also attracted early ecosystem backing. The startup received grants from cNGN, Base, and blockchain infrastructure provider Alchemy, reflecting its early integration into emerging crypto rails tied to the Nigerian market. “We integrated them [cNGN] without even having a relationship with them,” said Etefia in an interview with TechCabal. “We saw what cNGN could do and believed the naira could be spent globally, not just in Nigeria, so we built around that.” The startup, run by a three-person team, including Etefia, his co-founder, Maven Harry, and a community manager, had processed over $1.8 million in total payment volume (TPV) at the time of sale, according to Etefia. The acquisition transfers all of Bread Africa’s operational and branding assets to SMC DAO, which has long sought to own an exchange product within its ecosystem. Etefia will remain involved in an advisory capacity, consulting on Bread Africa’s development, while stepping back from day-to-day operations. His team, however, is moving on. Etefia and his co-founder will now focus fully on Loaf, a separate product they are building independently of the acquisition. The product is a significant expansion of Bread Africa’s original concept. Loaf goes beyond simple crypto swaps and functions as a “Web3 bank,” allowing users to spend crypto as easily as cash, including paying bills, buying airtime, and making cross-border payments without relying on traditional exchanges. For Etefia, selling Bread Africa and continuing to advise on it frees up his small team to concentrate on Loaf, which he argues has a much bigger upside. SMC DAO, the acquiring entity, operates as a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), an online community that pools funds and votes on what products to build or buy, similar to Shiba Inu and PEPE. For the community, Bread Africa is a ready‑made product that already helps people cash out of crypto into bank accounts. Under its new ownership, Bread Africa, which is currently under maintenance, will keep its core operational identity. “Bread Africa will remain a seamless web-based app with no sign-ups, wallet connections, or KYC required,” said an SMC DAO spokesperson. “We’re going to position the product as the go-to swap for cryptocurrencies.” The organisation is positioning the platform as a go-to destination for swapping digital assets, similar to decentralised exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap and PancakeSwap, which let users trade cryptocurrencies directly without intermediaries. SMC DAO also plans to evolve Bread Africa into a broader financial gateway that functions as an on-ramp, enabling users to exchange fiat for cryptocurrencies, and an off-ramp, to go back to cash. This is similar to how services like MoonPay work with crypto wallets such as Phantom, enabling users to buy and sell digital assets using traditional payment methods. Future iterations of Bread Africa will include support for multiple currencies, fiat-to-fiat conversions, and access to tokenised assets, such as stocks and commodities, which are digital versions of real-world financial instruments that can be traded on the blockchain, according to SMC DAO. As part of its post-acquisition strategy, the organisation has said it intends to transform Bread Africa into a “swap everything” platform, enabling users to move between crypto, fiat, and other digital representations of real-world assets. While the deal is modest in size and scope, it highlights a familiar pattern in Africa’s tech scene: small teams building focused products, testing user behaviour, and exiting early, often to ecosystem players looking to assemble broader financial platforms piece by piece.
Read MoreDamilola Jerugba describes his interest in building things as a fascination with how things work and come together. He said he taught himself how to code through Udemy courses and YouTube tutorials, and then went on to work as a software engineer at companies like Reddit, Moniepoint, and Busha. At Reddit, he worked on the advertising team, helping build the infrastructure companies use to run campaigns. At Moniepoint, he worked on customer support tools as a senior frontend engineer, and at Busha, he worked as a backend engineer. These experiences, he said, shaped how he thought about performance, reliability, and building systems that worked at scale. “These weren’t just jobs; they were an education I brought back into Jetron Ticket every single time.” The idea for Jetron Ticket came when his close friend, Jemedafe Caleb, who organised events and parties, needed coordination and a more reliable way to manage attendees. Jerugba saw it as a problem to solve and an opportunity to sharpen his coding skills. He co-founded with Akinkunmi Solomon in 2022. In its earliest version, Jetron Ticket was an online ticketing platform where event organisers could create events, sell tickets, and manage check-ins through a dashboard. Operated by a 10-person team, the platform gradually grew from a side project to one that supports events across multiple Nigerian cities, including Lagos, Kaduna, Plateau, and Rivers. Nigeria’s events scene has expanded rapidly in recent years, driven by music, nightlife, and cultural moments like Detty December, the festive period from mid-December through the New Year. defined by partying, concerts, and festivities. In 2025, Lagos recorded nearly ₦400 billion ($290 million) in consumer spending during the period, with over ₦129 billion ($93 million) going to entertainment and nightlife alone, according to a report by YC-backed fintech, Cowrywise. What pushed Jerugba into ticketing was what he described as a gap between demand and infrastructure. “When Jetron Ticket started, there wasn’t much out there to help organisers run professional events,” he said. “The infrastructure serving that market still hasn’t caught up with the demand.” Day 1: The missing emails and the founder who did almost everything Jetron’s first day was at a Y2K-themed party organised by the same friend whose problem led Jerugba to build the product. He had spent two months building the platform’s first version: users could create events, attendees could buy tickets, receive QR codes, and get scanned in at the venue. It worked, mostly. But the gaps became obvious quickly. The platform had no system to store customer emails, which meant that there was no way to build a user base or follow up on attendees after the event. To improvise, Jerugba and his team asked attendees for their names and email addresses at check-in and then typed them into an Excel spreadsheet, one by one It was slow and made check-in more tedious than it needed to be, but it was the only workaround the team had. There were other problems. Some attendees completed payments but didn’t immediately receive their QR codes. Because the team was still small, Jerugba handled most of those issues himself. “I was handling everything during that time,” he said. “I handled the entire software development life cycle, customer support, and check-ins, meaning I went to the events to help them with scanning to make sure everything went well.” The missing email system was one of the first things the company fixed after that debut event. Payment confirmation was overhauled so tickets could be delivered reliably. With each new event, Jerugba said, the rough edges from that first night were addressed one by one. Day 500: Growth came, and so did the bills By Jetron’s 100-day mark, something had started to click. The platform had grown beyond the initial circle of friends and was showing up across different cities, without a marketing strategy in place, according to Jerugba. “Once someone uses our platform for an event… attendees who also organise events will look at our platform and use it,” he said. For what started as a side project, he didn’t hide his surprise at the traction it was getting, particularly when he received a customer support request for an event in Kaduna, one of the most populous cities in Northern Nigeria. As usage grew, so did the demands of running the business behind it. From its inception, Jetron was sustained by Jerugba and his co-founder’s salaries, channelled directly into the company. According to Jerugba, the team was spending over ₦1.6 million ($1,160) monthly on salaries alone, with labour accounting for the bulk of its costs, followed by infrastructure and third-party tools required to keep the platform running. It worked for a while until Jerugba lost his job at Reddit in 2023 when his contract role ended. While Jetron was generating revenue, it wasn’t enough to cover costs, and letting employees go wasn’t something he was willing to consider. For about three months, Jetron ran entirely on his personal savings. “It was a tight window, but because our infrastructure costs were lean, the platform stayed live throughout.” His understanding of the industry itself was also deepening. Working closely with event organisers, especially during peak periods like Detty December, exposed Jerugba to the mechanics of the market. He began studying global players in the ticketing space like Ticketmaster and StubHub, learning how they handled growth, their unique features, how their systems were structured, and how they supported large events. That research shaped Jetron’s direction. In 2023, Jetron introduced new features, like seat mapping, to give attendees more control over where they would sit at an event, believing it would bring a level of structure that mirrored more mature ticketing systems. Over time, the product expanded to include tools like group tickets, promo codes, and curated guest lists—features designed to reflect how people actually attend events in Nigeria, often in groups or through coordinated access. Eventually, revenue began to reflect Jetron’s growth and match its costs. According to Jerugba, Jetron processed over ₦60 million ($43,000) in ticket
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