LAGOS, Aug 26 – Ventures Platform has closed its second institutional fund at $84 million, giving the Nigerian venture capital firm greater capacity to make larger investments in early-stage startups across Africa.
The new vehicle, VP Pan-African Fund II, is 1.8 times the size of the firm’s first institutional fund, which closed at $46 million in December 2022. Ventures Platform said the new fund will continue to invest across the pre-seed, seed and pre-Series A stages, but with a strategy centred on taking larger initial ownership positions in portfolio companies.
The fund attracted four new institutional investors: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Norway’s development finance institution Norfund, Dutch family office Alphatron and the Ashesi University Foundation. A group of additional family offices also joined the investor base.
They were joined by existing limited partners from the fund’s $64 million first close in November 2025, including 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, AfricaGrow and Alder Tree Investment.
The larger fund will not significantly increase the number of companies Ventures Platform intends to back. Instead, the firm plans to concentrate more capital in individual investments, targeting initial ownership of between 10% and 12%.
Kola Aina, Ventures Platform’s founding partner, told TechCabal that the strategy reflects a key lesson from the firm’s earlier investments. “What we’re looking to do is invest with much deeper conviction, so much larger ticket sizes,” Aina said. “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.”
The firm expects to deploy initial cheques of as much as $3 million, with the average investment around $1.5 million, Aina said. Ventures Platform will invest through pre-seed, seed and pre-Series A, while generally following existing portfolio companies into Series A rather than making new investments at that stage.
The greater emphasis on ownership is linked to the firm’s approach to generating liquidity. Ventures Platform has increasingly relied on secondary transactions, in which an early investor sells part or all of its stake to another investor, rather than waiting for an acquisition or public listing.
Aina described ownership as a critical factor in determining returns, saying, “Entry ownership is everything, because the stock only gets pricier.” He added that investors can face weaker outcomes at exit when they support a company from an early stage but hold only a small stake.
The firm believes secondary sales can provide an important source of liquidity because it enters companies earlier than many later-stage investors. Aina said Ventures Platform expects strategic acquisitions to remain its preferred exit route, while describing initial public offerings as “somewhat mythical.”
The firm’s research indicates that acquisitions account for 73% of African venture capital exits, reinforcing its focus on strategic sales and secondary transactions.
A broader institutional investor base
The composition of Fund II’s limited partner base also reflects Ventures Platform’s effort to attract capital from both development institutions and private investors.
Development finance institutions and sovereign-backed investors remain important to the fund, but private capital represents a larger proportion of Fund II than it did in the first fund, according to Aina. The investor base includes Standard Bank, European family offices and a university foundation.
Aina argued that Africa’s relatively small share of global venture capital makes additional sources of funding important for the continent’s startup ecosystem.
“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.”
The firm also sees government-backed capital as increasingly relevant to the development of African technology and creative industries. Nigeria’s iDICE programme is an anchor investor in Ventures Platform and, according to Aina, provided one of the fund’s largest individual commitments.
Managing currency risk
Ventures Platform is also building currency considerations directly into its investment strategy as it invests across markets where exchange-rate volatility can affect returns.
The firm considers currency depreciation a structural feature of African markets rather than a temporary risk. Its response includes geographic diversification, with the firm recently adding an investor based in Abidjan to cover Francophone West Africa and maintaining a presence in Cairo.
The fund also applies a higher growth threshold to potential investments, seeking businesses capable of growing faster than inflation and currency depreciation. It additionally favours companies that generate foreign-exchange revenue or operate business models that distribute currency exposure across multiple markets.
“We are assuming that we could have even more devaluation in the future, and we’ve baked that into our investing strategy,” Aina said, while pointing to recent reforms in markets such as Nigeria that have provided greater currency stability.
The $84 million fund gives Ventures Platform additional capital to pursue this strategy at a time when African startups continue to face tighter global funding conditions. Its focus on larger initial stakes and follow-on reserves could allow the firm to concentrate more capital behind companies it believes have the potential to become regional or continental leaders.
