Angel Investment in Africa//Here Are the Top 7 Networks in Africa

Angel Investment in Africa has recently grown rapidly alongside the development of startup ecosystems, which have greatly increased the number of investable opportunities.

African early-stage investing has been growing tremendously in the last five years. In 2015 Disrupt Africa released independently research showing that venture capital investments hit $186 million which was quite on the low

However, years later African tech ecosystem accelerator AfricArena predicted that venture capital funding in the continent’s startups would fall between $1.2 billion and $1.8 billion.

True to this prediction,  the latest report by Disrupt Africa released in January showed that Investment into the African tech startup ecosystem trebled over the course of a record-breaking 2021 that saw total funding pass the US$2 billion mark for the first time..

Africa has more VC-backed startups today than ever before with big investors—from Jeff Bezos to Serena Williams—having at least one African startup in their portfolios. 

This goes to show that African fundraising is mostly dedicated to venture capital and does not fully address the funding needs of many African startups. 

While all these predictions and numbers are quite lucrative, businesses across the continent keep mentioning lack of access to adequate capital as one of their main challenges during their start-up phase, putting budding ventures in a difficult situation when the lack of seed capital hinders growth and ultimately kills the company. 

On the other side, venture capitalists and impact investors complain of the lack of an investable pipeline.

This is where Angel investment in Africa comes to play by solving this problem through bridging the gap between the idea phase and the growth phase of a venture and by helping enterprises fulfil their mission of creators of jobs and innovative solutions for local social challenges.

Investment by angel investors into African startups has recently grown rapidly alongside the development of startup ecosystems, which have greatly increased the number of investable opportunities. Early signs of success, such as the emergence of several successful fintech startups, have spurred further interest from angel investors worldwide.

Business angels, who often invest through an angel network or syndicate, offer capital with high-risk appetite in combination with business expertise and networks. Angel investors are usually the first external investors into the company. As angels’ funding and mentorship is indispensable for founders, strengthening the role angels play in Africa is essential to helping startups overcome the pioneer gap.

With that in mind here is a list of top angel investor networks for startups to secure capital to launch their startups.

Rising Tide Africa

Rising Tide Africa is an all-female angel investing network co-founded by Yemi Keri and Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien in Lagos, Nigeria.

The platform engages in educating and training women to become sophisticated angel investors through its Program while offering them the opportunity to build a diversified portfolio of investments and receive mentoring from other women who are experienced angel investors.

RTA is a unique, trans-border women-oriented investment network funded by private investors who believe that they will bring about positive change by investing in the continent’s exciting start-ups and next generation to create a New Africa.

The network was an early investor in Migo (formerly Mines.io) which raised a $20M series B round in December to expand from Nigeria to Brazil. The network has seen the value of their investment grow by 9x in a short time frame.

Now with a track record, Rising Tide Africa members are required to invest a minimum of 5M Naira (around $14,000) annually into the fund and that money will be distributed across all deals that the network makes.

Angel Investment Network

Angel Investment Network is currently the largest group of angel investors in the world with more than 300,000 members. With such a high number of angel investors to select from, any type of business can seek funding through this investment group. The main sectors that they focus on include technology, software, and property. The blog that they run on their site offers up the latest news about angel investors, startups, and entrepreneurs.

With the number of angel investors, this is among the most popular angel investment groups around. You can interact with them on Facebook and Twitter where they have 20,000 and 23,000 followers respectively. 

ABAN Network

Founded by Tomi Davis, African Business Angel Network is a pan African non-profit association founded to support the development of early-stage investor networks. 

ABAN began as a consortium of independent investor networks including the Lagos Angels Network (LAN), Cameroon Angel Network (CAN), Ghana Angel Network (GAIN), Venture Capital for Africa (VC4Africa), Silicon Cape and supported by the European Business Angel Network (EBAN).

ABAN’s mission is to help quantum leap early-stage investing in Africa by providing the support, networking opportunities, and essential resources to Africa’s Angel Investing Networks needed to maximize their impact.

In 2021, ABAN Network partnered with AfriLabs and created Catalytic, a co-investment fund that will match investments made by registered angel investors with institutional funds. 

The initiative is supported by Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and the Digital  Africa fund, who have been critical partners in Catalytic Africa’s first round of startups.

AngelList

AngelList is a website dedicated specifically to helping tech startups raise funds, recruit team members, and launch their business with the assistance of angel investors.

It’s easy for people to find jobs at a startup on this website and invest in companies that they’re interested in once they join AngelList, which is why it’s very popular among startups that are looking to grow. 

The blog that’s maintained on this website centers around investing and angel investors. Some of the topics that are written about on this blog include how to set up a remote team, how to incorporate diversity into your hiring process, and the importance of agile methodology is.

AngelList, is also quite active on Facebook and Twitter accounts with quite an impressive following with regular updates, the latter of which has more than 380,000 followers

The Cairo Angels

The Cairo Angels  is Egypt’s first formal angel investment network; investing in and supporting early-stage startups in Egypt and across the MENA region. Established in 2012, Cairo Angels convenes regular investment meetings to review pre-selected potential investees that meet the Cairo Angels investment criteria. Members may join virtually or physically in either Cairo or London.

While angels make their own investment decisions, Cairo Angels facilitates due diligence for opportunities that receive interest from investors, negotiates terms and finalizes deal closing. Post-investment, the Cairo Angels can also provide portfolio management services for its investors. Angels invest their personal money in return for a minority equity stake in the business, and collectively make investments that range between 250K to 2M Egyptian Pounds per Company.

To date, Cairo Angels have invested over USD2.8 million in 28 startups across 6 cities.

ViKtoria Ventures

ViKtoria Ventures is a Kenyan company that is helping early-stage companies obtain seed funding from angel investors and forge networks necessary for growth.

Viktoria does this through angel events held every two/ three months where they invite angels and potential angels to listen to promising startups we have worked with.

The aim is to have the angels finance, mentor and/ or make key business introductions for the startups.

The angels also get the opportunity to learn through various technical training sessions geared towards early stage investment which are part of the events. The events are led by experienced angels and practitioners in early-stage investing.

Carthage Business Angels

Carthage Business Angels is the first angel investors network in Tunisia, and it presents as a 3E Agency: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabler.

It deals with the whole Start-up creation and development value chain. Since its inception in 2010, Carthage Business Angels is supporting and co-implementing several ideation, incubation and acceleration programs and initiatives.

The association is backed by the leading private business Incubator Wiki Startup. They were involved together in the publication of several studies and policy papers covering various themes in relation to Access to Finance and capital market Development, Innovation and technology transfer, business incubation, Research Base spin-off generation (the knowledge material is available on www.wikistartup.tn ).

Carthage Business Angels is also well recognized as an Executive Partner for Business Support Organisations and Service providers to entrepreneurs since it co-implemented several programs in partnership with international institutions like GIZ, USAID (Univenture) or AFD (star’Act).