Hello Community,

The last time we updated you on our investment activities was in May. Since then, we've grown our portfolio significantly. Our mission remains to support innovators who are turning Africa’s biggest challenges into global business opportunities with capital, coaching and community. We fund these companies via our community of angel investors - Future Africa Collective and the Future Africa Fund – our uniquely designed fund.

Today's update highlights our fund activity for the 2nd quarter of 2021.

Here are some milestones we achieved in Q2:

• We invested $1.2 million in 15 startups for the 2nd quarter of 2021 from April to June. This brought our total portfolio count to 55 companies at the end of June.
• 46.7% of the companies we invested in had at least one female co-founder. For context, in 2020, only 13% of African startup investments featured startups with a female co-founder.
• In this quarter we welcomed startups from Kenya and Tanzania. We invested in 4 Kenyan companies and 1 Tanzanian company.
• 5 of these startups are at pre-seed, 9 at seed and 1 at Series A.

In no particular order, we present the 15 companies we backed in the 2nd quarter of 2021. Unfortunately, some of them are yet to announce their fundraises, so we have to retract their names:

• Lami

Led by Jihan Abass, Lami democratizes insurance products and services for low-income groups. The company enables partner businesses - including banks, tech companies, and other entities – to easily and seamlessly offer digital insurance products to their users via Lami’s API. It connects partner organizations with underwriters and allows them to offer a superior customer journey. With Lami, these businesses are able to deliver insurance products that complement the goods and services they already sell. Stanbic Bank and Jumia are among the businesses that partner with Lami.

Through its API, Lami users can get a quotation for motor, medical, or other insurance products in seconds, then customize the benefits and adjust the premium to suit their needs and get their policy documents instantly.

• MarketForce

We participated in Marketforce’s $2m seed round. Founded by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti, Marketforce is building the operating system for the retail supply chain in Africa. Its products RejaReja and MarketForce360 operate at different sides of the chain.

The company provides ordering, invoicing, CRM, and analytics for the full retail supply chain. MarketForce provides easy mobile ordering for retailers, CRM and manpower for distributor sales, and valuable analytics for upstream manufacturers. The products/services include field agent CRM software, retailer invoicing/accounting app, and providing a contractor sales force for smaller distributors.

Read why we invested in MarketForce.

• MDaaS Global

We joined Newton Partners, CRI Foundation, FINCA Ventures and TechStars in MDaaS’ $2.3m seed extension round. This is our second investment in the company. It's building an important network of diagnostic centres for Nigeria and launched its new product SentinelX.

MDaaS is aiming to be the largest and most trusted provider of diagnostic and primary care across Africa, meeting the healthcare needs of the next billion. As the company continues to grow, they are looking to leverage their diagnostics infrastructure to efficiently deploy new products and services such as virtual primary care, chronic disease management, clinical research, and specialized diagnostics.

Read why we invested in MDaaS

• Nexford University

Nexford is bringing world-class education to underserved students in Africa, starting with Nigeria. They provide students with the opportunity to gain an affordable, world-class education that provides skills and experiences directly applicable in the working world, where they would not otherwise be able to.

Nexford’s courses, recognized by Quality Matters and CMI, are designed to save people money while offering them more flexibility. The university focuses its courses on the skills employers are currently looking for.

Read why we invested in Nexford

• PayHippo

We participated in PayHippo’s $1m pre-seed round. PayHippo provides SMEs in Nigeria with credit. It has disbursed 3,000 loans worth over $4.1m since it was launched and is growing 25% month-on-month. The team is led by Zach Bijesse (CEO), Chioma Okotcha (COO), and Uche Nnadi (CTO).

• RxAll

On behalf of big pharma (including Pfizer, Lilly Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca and GSK) and curated pharma wholesalers, RxAll delivers batch quality-certified drugs to hospitals, pharmacies and patients using their digital ordering platform. RxAll offers a suite of technologies that span the medicine retail supply chain, connecting it in an unparalleled way.

Join The Future Africa Collective – an exclusive community of angel investors who invest in mission-driven startups building the future of Africa. With your $1,000 annual subscription fee or $300 quarterly subscription fee, you get access to invest a minimum of $2,500 in up to 20 African startups each year or up to 5 each quarter.

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Others

• A startup building a learning and school management platform for Africa. It is helping school administrators, teachers and other staff digitise and automate several educational processes. Over 700 schools use its services in 3 African countries.
• There are a lot of lending platforms in Kenya but they lack emphasis on helping & teaching citizens to build wealth. We invested in the seed round of A Kenyan startup building different investment services to help Kenyans grow their wealth. It has plans to expand to more countries in East Africa soon.
• A startup building a service to enable money clubs that mimic the social aspect of a Susu. It intends to create a digital network of social money clubs, including loans, savings and investment clubs. It is a new type of neobank (a digital-only bank) built as a social trust network where people pool funds and risk to unlock access to better credit terms and other financial products that unlock business growth and individual economic mobility.
• A startup providing immigrants with the best of Nigeria and the USA in one banking app with multi-currency, government-insured accounts. Users can cash in, cash out as well as conduct currency exchanges, save and invest in both countries.
• We joined the series A round of a startup making access to quality and affordable healthcare products possible. The company has been a pioneer in pharmaceutical supply chain solutions in Africa for the past 6 years and operates two products in two African countries.
• A digital bank enabling transactions for financial organisations operating in the African corridor. This bank will first solve for the UK-Africa corridor and expand into the rest of Europe.
• A startup turning Savings and Credit Cooperative operators into a digital bank which makes them more transparent and secure in terms of operations but with an affordable tiered SaaS pricing. It also enables improved services for members in terms of more, better, and faster access to digital products. Their ultimate goal is to improve the overall financial health of the cooperative’s members.
• A startup offering supply chain financing for consumer packaged goods in Africa. The company integrates with brands of consumer packaged goods to provide their distributors with 30-day loans on inventory. They underwrite these loans using proprietary cashflow data and are currently tracking more than $400,000 in monthly Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).
• A Nigerian startup building a marketplace solution that enables retailers to buy products directly from manufacturers using a mobile app. Retailers save time, cut down logistics costs and access instant credit through buy now, pay later. The team has over 25 years of experience across the distribution and e-commerce value chains having previously worked with some of the largest FMCG companies operating in Africa.

Some other updates:

• We reduced minimum cheque sizes for Future Africa Collective members to $2500. This means with $2500, our members can invest in startups we present to them.
• We launched the first version of our web platform for applicants and members of Future Africa Collective. This platform makes it easier to apply, pay and manage subscriptions, view upcoming deals, read through the information we provide for investments and access investment opportunities.
• We introduced quarterly memberships to Future Africa Collective for $300. You can now subscribe for a lower fee and will receive up to 5 startups to invest in each quarter.

We'll like to thank our outstanding Future Africa Collective members who have joined us to support these startups. We can't thank you enough for coming on this missionary journey with us.

Applications to the Future Africa Collective are open all year round. With your $1,000 annual or $300 quarterly subscription fee, you get access to invest a minimum of $2,500 in up to 20 African startups each year or up to 5 startups each quarter.

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We also thank all our LPs in the Future Africa Fund. For a commitment of $25,000 per quarter, you can become an LP in the Future Africa Fund - a uniquely designed venture capital fund where we invest all year round in African innovators.

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Our fund is always open to founders. We fund early-stage mission-driven founders who are turning Africa’s most significant challenges into global business opportunities. If this sounds like you and your time, please apply to the fund.

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Adenike Sheriff,
Principal,
Future Africa

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