Ventures Platform Closes $84M Pan-African Fund II, Beating $75M Target
Ventures Platform closed its second fund, VP Pan-African Fund II, at $84 million — beating its $75 million target — with new backing from EBRD, Norfund, and Ashesi University Foundation, and continued support from IFC, BII, and Proparco, three years after its debut fund.
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Lagos, Nigeria — Ventures Platform closed its second fund, VP Pan-African Fund II, at $84 million on August 26, 2026, exceeding its original $75 million target. The close comes three years after the pan-African seed and early-stage investor closed its debut fund.
The fund draws on a mix of new and returning limited partners. New backers include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Norway's development finance institution Norfund, Alphatron, the Ashesi University Foundation, and a consortium of new family offices. Existing LPs — the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Standard Bank, British International Investment (BII), Proparco, Nigeria's iDICE, MSMEDA, AfricaGrow, and Alder Tree Investment — returned for the second close.
VP Pan-African Fund II will invest from pre-seed through Series A, continuing the firm's pan-African, sector-agnostic approach to backing what founder and general partner Kola Aina calls "mission-driven entrepreneurs using technology to address Africa's challenges." Ventures Platform's existing portfolio includes Moniepoint, PiggyVest, OmniRetail, SeamlessHR, and Raenest.
"This fund is ultimately not about the capital we've raised, but about the entrepreneurs we're privileged to back," Aina said. EBRD's Dirk Werner added: "Innovation is increasingly shaping Africa's economic future, yet venture capital remains underdeveloped relative to entrepreneurial activity."
An $84 million close — above target, with two DFIs (EBRD, Norfund) writing checks into an African VC fund for the first time, alongside repeat commitments from IFC, BII, and Proparco — signals that institutional LP appetite for pre-seed-to-Series-A African exposure hasn't cooled, even as later-stage rounds get harder to close elsewhere. For founders at the stages Ventures Platform funds, this is fresh dry powder deployed exactly where Lemina sees the thinnest verified data and the widest gap between real traction and what investors can confirm. For LPs and allocators benchmarking African VC, the roster itself is the story: DFI capital now sits alongside a university endowment (Ashesi) and family offices in the same vehicle — evidence the asset class is diversifying its capital base beyond the DFI-only structure that defined it a decade ago.
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