Ventures Platform has closed its second institutional fund at $84 million. The Nigerian venture capital firm is one of Africa’s most active seed-stage investors. Notably, this new fund falls just $23 million short of what all six African venture funds raised combined in 2025.
The fund is called VP Pan-African Fund II. It brings in four new institutional backers. These include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Norway’s development finance institution Norfund, the Dutch family office Alphatron, and the Ashesi University Foundation. A group of new family offices also joined the round.
These new investors join limited partners from the fund’s first close in November 2025. That group includes Nigeria’s iDICE programme, the International Finance Corporation, Standard Bank, and British International Investment. Proparco, Egypt’s MSMEDA, AfricaGrow, and Alder Tree Investment also returned as backers.
The new fund is 1.8 times bigger than Ventures Platform’s first institutional fund. That fund closed at $46 million in December 2022. However, the firm still plans to back roughly the same number of startups. It simply wants to write bigger cheques and hold bigger stakes. So, it is now targeting entry ownership of 10% to 12% in each company.
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Kola Aina is the firm’s founding partner. He told TechCabal that Ventures Platform wants to invest with deeper conviction and larger ticket sizes. He also said the firm wants reserve capital ready, so it can double down on its strongest performers.
This approach comes from a hard lesson learned during the first fund. According to Aina, entry ownership matters a lot. A startup’s valuation only grows more expensive over time. So, if a fund enters with too small a stake, it struggles to earn meaningful returns later, even when that startup succeeds.
This lesson connects directly to how African venture capital pays investors back. Secondary sales have become the firm’s most reliable route to liquidity. In a secondary sale, an early investor sells part of its stake to another investor. This happens instead of waiting for an acquisition or a public listing. As a result, the math only works well when a fund owns a large enough slice of a company from the start.
Ventures Platform now runs three investment strategies. These cover pre-seed, seed, and pre-Series A rounds. The firm has modelled a first cheque of up to $3 million. Its average ticket size sits around $1.5 million. Series A marks the end of the line for new checks. Still, the fund will follow existing portfolio companies into that stage.
Aina still sees strategic acquisitions as the main exit path for African startups. Meanwhile, he described initial public offerings as largely out of reach for now. In fact, research from his firm found that 73% of African venture exits happen through acquisitions. This finding reinforces his focus on secondary sales as a liquidity strategy.
The fund’s investor base leans heavily on development finance institutions and sovereign capital. But Aina pushed back on the idea that this shapes the firm’s strategy unfairly. Instead, he pointed to commercial backers like Standard Bank, several European family offices, and a university foundation. He said private capital, especially from European family offices, now makes up a bigger share of the fund than before.
Aina argued that Africa still receives less than 2% of global venture capital. He believes the continent needs far more funding, not less. So, he said he welcomes capital from any source, as long as it fits his firm’s strategy.
He singled out Nigeria’s iDICE programme as a source of particular pride. This programme is run by the Bank of Industry. It acted as an anchor investor and wrote one of the largest individual cheques in the fund.
Currency devaluation is another factor shaping how Ventures Platform invests. Aina said the firm treats it as a normal part of doing business in Africa, not something to hedge against. To manage this, the firm has diversified geographically. For example, it recently hired investors based in Abidjan and Cairo, giving the portfolio exposure to different currencies. The firm also sets a higher growth bar for its companies. They must outpace inflation and devaluation to qualify for backing. Additionally, the firm favours businesses that naturally earn foreign exchange or spread revenue across multiple currencies.
With Fund II now closed, Ventures Platform has already written checks to five companies. These are based in Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. This move extends the firm’s reach beyond its home base in Nigeria and into new African markets.
