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Satgana, a venture capital firm that invests $570,000 each in African and European climate tech startups, is raising two new funds—one for each continent. The firm, named after the Sanskrit word for “good company,” has deployed capital into 30 startups across both regions, backing companies where climate efficiency drives the business model. “We are currently structuring two dedicated vehicles, one focused on Europe and one on Africa,” said Anil Maguru, a partner at Satgana. “We are not communicating final fund sizes publicly yet, as the process is still ongoing.” Maguru joined Romain Diaz, Satgana’s founder, as a founding member and partner when the fund was launched in 2020, and his unique perspective with Diaz helped build the firm’s Africa-European strategy. “The European and African positioning is less about geographic diversification and more a design principle: African markets often act as a strong filter that forces companies to build for resilience and real demand, while Europe provides industrial partners, capital depth, and exit routes,” said Maguru. Satgana invests in climate technology solutions across transportation, energy, food and agriculture, industry and construction, carbon abatement, and the circular economy. Crunchbase Some of Satgana’s portfolio companies include Orbio Earth, a Germany-based startup that uses satellite imagery and proprietary algorithms to track and quantify methane emissions from the oil and gas industry; Mazi Mobility, a Nairobi, Kenya-based mobility-as-a-service company electrifying the motorcycle taxi (“boda boda”) industry with electric bikes and battery swapping stations; and Revivo, a Nairobi, Kenya-based B2B marketplace connecting small repair shops with quality electronic spare parts, accessories, and repair tools to build a circular repair economy. For this week’s Ask an Investor, I spoke with Maguru about the fund’s strategy of backing climate-tech startups across Africa and Europe, how Satgana evaluates startups, and why the firm prioritises solutions that work under imperfect market conditions. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. You’ve been investing in startups and helping to build companies for several years now. How have the past five or six years been for you, and what have you learned? Over the last six years, it has been an intense journey. When we started, everything was a first for us: first-time team, first-time fund, first-time investments together, really, first-time everything. But now, looking back over the past five or six years, we’ve built a record we are very proud of. We manage about $10 million in assets under management. We have backed 30 companies across 16 countries. We have more than 150 investors from 25 different countries. About 90% of our portfolio is still alive, which is a very high survival rate, and close to 50% of the portfolio has gone on to raise follow-on rounds. Of course, none of it would have been possible without the amazing founders we’ve met along the way. At the same time, we’ve also experienced our first failures; some companies have started to go down. But overall, things have gone very well. The team has also grown. We now have dedicated teams looking at both regions: Europe and Africa. The impact is growing, and we still see more opportunity ahead. You talk about opportunity. What is Satgana’s next chapter? From our first fund, we were fortunate to invest in 30 amazing companies and back exceptional founders, including female founders, across Europe and Africa. We saw firsthand how much both regions have to offer. For us, it was therefore very logical to double down on this strategy. We are now launching two new funds: one dedicated to Europe and one dedicated to Africa, each with a dedicated team. The goal is to source even more founders, become even more pan-African than we were before, and build dedicated vehicles for dedicated geographies. These funds will also be larger. We will be able to write bigger tickets and have more capacity to double down on the right companies. In Africa, especially, we are looking for companies that show strong signals early—companies with paying customers, companies that do not rely heavily on subsidies, companies where adoption spreads through trust and word of mouth, and companies led by founders with real financial discipline. That, for us, is real traction. So, for companies that see themselves in that description, we would very much encourage them to reach out. We need to find them because those are exactly the kinds of businesses we want to back with these new funds. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events Next wave Entering Tech Subscribe Climate tech is a very broad category. It can cover everything from carbon accounting software to nuclear fusion. What is Satgana’s own definition of climate tech, and where do you draw a hard line on what you would not invest in? For us, the hard line is drawn at businesses where climate is simply a story layered on top of a normal company, rather than the engine of the company itself. For instance, if a startup’s margins improve when emissions increase, or if the impact disappears the moment subsidies disappear, then the alignment is broken. We try as much as possible not to invest in green narratives. We invest in climate economics. Working in Africa made this very clear to us very early on. Customers do not buy climate because it is good for the planet. They buy reliability, cost savings, and productivity. If climate does not translate into real economic value for the user, it does not scale. That is why we avoid solutions that depend on perfect regulation, heavy
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. Streaming is widely seen as the present and future of television, and Africa was supposed to be the next frontier. With the continent still largely underconnected but home to a young, mobile-first population, global media companies saw a future in which millions of Africans would gradually shift from satellite television to streaming platforms as smartphone penetration and broadband access improved. For MultiChoice, Showmax was meant to capture that future. After more than a decade trying to build Africa’s answer to Netflix, the streaming platform is now being wound down as Canal+, the new owner of MultiChoice, restructures the company’s streaming strategy. The financial trail behind the experiment tells the story: between 2023 and 2025, Showmax generated $204.29 million in revenue but recorded more than $523.53 million in operating losses, while committing hundreds of millions more to rebuild its technology and content library. The platform lost $2.50 for every $1 it generated in revenue during that period Here is how the money moved. The money raised In 2023, MultiChoice brought in Comcast’s NBCUniversal, to rebuild Showmax. The partnership created a new entity, Showmax Africa Holdings Limited, incorporated in the United Kingdom and overseeing operations across the continent. NBCUniversal acquired 30% of the business for $29 million (ZAR536 million). Showmax has also received additional equity injections: $36 million (ZAR687 million) in 2024, and $85 million (ZAR1.55 billion) in 2025. These investments were meant to serve as working capital for the streaming platform. The money spent The biggest financial commitment was a seven-year technology licensing deal with NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming platform. The agreement, signed in 2024, was worth ZAR6.8 billion ($405 million). Rather than build its own infrastructure, Showmax licensed Peacock’s global streaming technology to power its relaunch. The deal covered streaming infrastructure, recommendation algorithms, product engineering, and global platform architecture By March 2025, $59.56 million had already been spent, leaving $345.44 million still outstanding over the remaining six years. Content spending also surged. Showmax significantly expanded its African originals and content catalogue: 59 original films by 2024, and 82 by 2025. Content cost between both years totalled ZAR3.95 billion ($235.26 million). Staff cost stood at ZAR1.04 billion ($61.64 million), and sales and marketing totalled ZAR1.21 billion ($72.19 million). Miscellaneous spending stood at ZAR3.71 billion ($221.14 million) for both years. The $2.50 Problem Between 2023 and 2025, Showmax lost $2.50 for every $1.00 it generated. Tap the expenses below to see how individual costs completely dwarfed the platform’s revenue. Money In (Revenue) $1.00 MONEY OUT (PER $1 EARNED) Content Creation & Licensing $1.29 Total Nominal Spend: $235.26 Million Showmax rapidly expanded its catalogue, paying for licensing and producing 82 original African films and series by 2025. This single expense was larger than their total revenue. Miscellaneous $1.21 Total Nominal Spend: $221.14 Million Unspecified operational, distribution, and corporate overhead costs incurred while trying to bed down distribution partnerships across the continent. Sales & Marketing $0.40 Total Nominal Spend: $72.19 Million Aggressive customer acquisition campaigns to push the relaunch and drive a 44% growth in paying subscribers across new markets like Kenya and Nigeria. Staff Costs $0.34 Total Nominal Spend: $61.64 Million Payroll and human resources required to run the streaming unit across multiple African territories. Technology Infrastructure $0.32 Total Nominal Spend: $59.56 Million The initial payments for a 7-year, $405M licensing deal to use NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform architecture instead of building an in-house solution. Data: MultiChoice Disclosures TechCabal Tools The revenue generated Despite the heavy spending, Showmax’s revenues remained modest. Between 2023 and 2025, the platform generated ZAR3.43 billion ($204.29 million) in total revenue and ZAR2.44 billion ($145.35 million) in subscription revenue Revenue peaked in 2024, the year Showmax relaunched with its new platform, sports streaming expansion, and increased local content. MultiChoice said the platform also recorded 44% growth in paying subscribers, expanding beyond its core markets in South Africa and Nigeria into Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia through telecom partnerships. The losses accumulated The cost of building a streaming platform far outpaced revenue growth. Between 2023 and 2025, Showmax recorded operating losses of ZAR8.79 billion ($523.53 million). Losses peaked in 2025, which MultiChoice described as the platform’s “peak investment year.” “As a start-up business, Showmax focused on enhancing its content line-up, bedding down distribution partnerships, expanding payment channel integrations and refining its go-to-market strategy,” the company said in 2025. “As FY25 was the peak investment year, reflected by a step-up in content costs to attract viewers and platform costs to create capacity, trading losses increased by 88% YoY.” The strategy Showmax’s spending was tied to a long-term bet on Africa’s streaming future. In May 2023, the company told investors it planned to reach $1 billion in revenue within five years and break even by 2027. The strategy relied on aggressive expansion of African original content, partnerships with telecom operators and payment providers, and the Peacock technology platform to scale globally MultiChoice also planned to increase Showmax originals tenfold by 2033, betting that demand for African stories would continue to grow. “It remains clear that streaming represents the future of video entertainment,” Multichoice said in 2025. “Although the current levels of broadband and SVOD penetration across Africa are not yet at comparable levels to the rest of the world, they suggest significant long-term upside. However, data pricing would need to evolve further for this market segment to reach its full potential.” The lesson Showmax’s shutdown highlights a difficult financial reality in the global streaming industry. Streaming platforms require massive scale and continuous investment in both technology and content, and Africa’s market, however, still faces structural limits, including lower subscription purchasing power and limited broadband penetration. This has been shown in how global streaming companies have adjusted their African expectations. Netflix reduced production budgets in Nigeria, while Amazon Prime Video shut down its African operations in 2024. Streaming is still central to MultiChoice’s strategy,
Read More“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” It is a clever line, often quoted in boardrooms and strategy retreats. But he was also a man who, almost certainly, never had to travel the continent with a Nigerian passport. We speak the dialect of a “borderless” digital economy, yet we move across our own continent like unwelcome guests. The paradox is stark: Nigeria is projected to be the world’s third most populous nation by 2050, wielding a cultural soft power that dictates global charts. We are Africa’s largest nominal GDP engine and its venture funding magnet. Yet, we live inside aviation islands, internally disconnected, externally tethered. Mobility is not a “travel issue”; it is infrastructure revealed in boarding passes. While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) professionals glide through open-air economies, 72% of intra-African travel still requires a visa. Now let’s consider the “Mobility Ratio”: A Singaporean passport holder accesses 4x more destinations bureaucracy-free than a Nigerian. This gap isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a Domestic-Only Penalty. Our data shows that a pan-African consultant earns 5x more than a domestic-only practitioner. The difference isn’t the CV; it’s the passport. A business trip between three African countries in five days. On a map, the route looked elegantly simple, a neat triangular loop within the continent. In my inbox, the itinerary told a different story. To make it work without losing entire days to layovers and visa queues, I had to fly into Europe three separate times, exiting the continent just to re-enter it. Lagos to Europe to Africa, then Africa to Europe to Africa. Each connection felt like a commentary. The skies above us were open, but our borders and systems were not. This friction has a specific victim: The Woman in Leadership. We often attribute the attrition of women at the senior executive level to “culture” or “unpaid care.” While true, we overlook the Infrastructure Filter. When a 48-hour deal-closing trip morphs into a three-week logistical marathon of consular backlogs and opaque rules, organisations default to the “path of least resistance.” They send the person for whom the path is smoother. The result is a persistent erosion of women’s visibility and influence in regional and global spaces. You do not publicly remove women from the table; you quietly make it harder for them to get to the table. This isn’t just a “women’s issue.” It is an economic leak. If women represent up to 70% of informal cross-border trade but face the highest barriers to formal mobility, we are capping our GDP by design. Inclusion here then becomes a transport protocol, not an HR policy. And yet this is the same continent that has launched one of the most ambitious economic projects in the world. The African Continental Free Trade Area promises a single market of over a billion people and a combined GDP of $10.8 trillion. Projections suggest that by 2035, if AfCFTA is fully implemented, income gains could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions could be lifted out of poverty. The agreement recognises not just the movement of goods, but also the movement of services, including what trade lawyers call Mode 4, the temporary movement of people to provide services across borders. On paper, we understand that ideas and expertise need legs, not just fibre optic cables. In reality, our behaviour reveals a different fact. Tariffs are discussed, negotiated, and reduced, while non-tariff barriers like visas, fragmented regulations, and underdeveloped aviation routes continue to quietly choke the arteries of intra-African trade. We are, in effect, externally connected but internally disconnected. It is easier for an African founder to meet a European investor in Paris than to meet an African customer in a neighbouring country. It is easier for foreign capital to move freely into African markets than for African professionals to move freely between those same markets. To make it worse, the perception of African travel is still questioned over Europe, a mindset engineering that only occurs when we view ourselves through a warped lens. Much less, working in Africa versus Europe/the West. We proudly call ourselves global, but remain strangely constrained at home. What might a serious solution look like? It has to be a deliberate reframing of mobility as critical economic infrastructure, as fundamental as ports, power, or digital networks, not another slogan about free movement. It must start from a simple insight: states have legitimate security concerns about migration, but those concerns can be addressed with better tools, not just tighter gates. Imagine a continental framework where businesspersons and value creators are not treated as strangers at every border, but as known, pre-vetted participants in a shared growth project. They register once, their identities and credentials are verified using modern digital systems, and their histories are checked and cross-checked. Immigration authorities across participating states can view this information in advance, make independent decisions, and issue approvals in a structured and predictable way. Once cleared, these travellers carry a recognised digital credential, secure, revocable, but trusted, that allows them to move across a network of African countries with far less friction. In such a system, the entrepreneur from Lagos could fly to Kigali, then on to Nairobi and Addis Ababa, without re-entering the same bureaucratic maze at each leg. Airlines could design routes that reflect real demand rather than old hub patterns. Time would shift from visa queues to deal rooms and factory floors. Risk would be managed not by blanket suspicion, but by data and cooperation. States would not be asked to surrender sovereignty; they would be invited to exercise it more intelligently, together. We are not starting from zero. Across the continent, serious attempts are already underway to tackle the mobility question from different angles. AfCFTA has begun technical work on making the movement of trusted businesspersons real. Regional bodies are experimenting with visa-free regimes and common passports. Development partners and international organisations are funding programmes on labour migration, skills mobility, and digital identity. Innovation platforms are
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