👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Pick n Pay, pick n scroll

Ventures Platform (VP), the Nigerian venture capital firm, has closed its second fund at $84 million, almost twice the $46 million it raised for its first fund in 2022. This time, the firm is looking to write bigger cheques to own more equity in African startups it backs—up to 12%.

What happened? The VP Pan-African Fund II has brought in four new investors, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); Norfund, Norway’s development finance institution (DFI); the Dutch family office Alphatron; and the Ashesi University Foundation, to add to the $64 million first close of the fund in November 2025.

Explain like I’m new here: Ventures Platform works like a startup shopper. It raises money from investors, pools it into a fund, then uses that money to buy stakes in young companies it believes can become much bigger. 

Some of the companies it has invested in include Paystack, PiggyVest, Moove, Mono, Remedial Health, and Raenest. The venture capital firm invests in these companies at their pre-seed, seed, or pre-Series A stage, and makes more money if those companies become more valuable. Fund II will follow the same playbook, but with bigger cheques.

Playing into the funding pattern: Ventures Platform plans to invest up to $3 million initially, with an average cheque of about $1.5 million, while targeting 10%–12% ownership in the startups it backs. 

While the company has not disclosed the number of startups benefiting from this fund, the strategy fits the shift in African venture capital, where investors are putting more money into fewer companies. 

In H1 2026, African startups raised $1.44 billion, 1.4% more than the same period in 2025, while the number of deals dropped from 252 to 174.

Yet, Ventures Platform coming to the table with bigger cheques gives African founders another sizable pool of capital at a time when fundraising has become more selective.