🌏 Asia 🤝 Africa 🌍

A closer look at APAC-based investors investing on the continent

Greetings from Singapore 🇸🇬! I am here for a few days, and as I was preparing for a talk I’ll be giving on Thursday evening at the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies (scroll down for more details), I thought I’d have a closer look at Asia-Pacific-based investors for this week’s post…

While APAC cannot compete with North America, Africa, or Europe - where 6 out of 7 investors involved in at least one $100k+ deal in Africa have been based since 2019 (33%, 29% and 23% respectively; 84% in total) -, it is the fourth region of origin of investors in Africa (8.5%), just ahead of the Middle East (7%). This has been consistent year on year since 2019, except in 2020 when the Middle East temporarily took the #4 spot.

Overall, we have identified 179 APAC-based investors who have been involved in at least one $100k+ deal since 2019 (including grants & exits); in total, they participated in around 500 such deals over the period. After a peak during the ‘funding heatwave’ (~70 active APAC investors in both 2021 and 2022), around 40 APAC investors have been active in deals in Africa in both 2023 and 2024. If we zoom in at a country level, we find that two thirds of the APAC investors who played a role in deals in Africa since 2019 were based in three countries: Japan (49, 27%), Singapore (39, 22%), and China (33, 18%). For comparison’s sake, globally this puts them at #9 (on an equal footing with the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia), #12 and #15 (a tie with Germany) respectively. Three other countries in the region were host to at least 10 investors active in Africa over the period: India (17), Hong Kong (15) and Australia (11).

Who have been the most active APAC investors since 2019?… At the very top of the list is Kepple Africa Ventures (🇯🇵🇳🇬) founded in late 2019 and which was involved in more than 70 deals, mostly between 2020 and 2022, making it one of the top 10 all-time investors in Africa as far as the number of deals is concerned. They remain active on the continent through a new JV - Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures - which closed its first fund ($60m) in April 2024. It is followed by Samurai Incubate (🇯🇵) who between 2020 and 2023 was involved in 28+ deals on the continent. Uncovered Fund (🇯🇵) was also active during the same period with 21+ deals. Healthcare-focused fund AAIC (🇸🇬) has also been involved in 20+ deals on the continent since 2019, with the particularity of being the only investor who have made at least one deal on the continent every single year during the period according to our records - including in 2025 already through a participation in Gozem’s $30m Series B. Other APAC investors who have been involved in at least 10 deals in Africa over the past six years include the mobility-focused CVC of Toyota Mobility 54 (🇯🇵); MSA Capital (🇨🇳), whose last publicly known investment in Africa was in 2022; Tencent (🇨🇳), who also hasn’t disclosed deals on the continent since 2023; Antler (🇸🇬), focused on East Africa; and Web3-focused EMURGO (🇸🇬) who recently participated in MoneyHash’s $5m+ pre-Series A in Egypt.

Other funds - though not technically based in APAC - benefit from strong backing from Asian investors, such as Novastar Ventures who recently announced their $200m Novastar III Africa People+Planet Fund, which includes Japanese shipping conglomerate Mitsui O.S.K. Lines as one of its anchor LPs. We can also mention that through its Africa Netpreneur Prize and Africa’s Business Heroes initiatives, the Alibaba Foundation (🇨🇳) has awarded 30+ large-size grants to African entrepreneurs back in 2021 and 2022, and more recently in early 2025.

Given APAC’s demographic and economic weight, it feels like there are still many untapped opportunities for Asian investors on the continent, but it is great to remind ourselves that they have already been playing a role on the African start-up investment scene…

That will be it for today. If you need more information, you know you can find it by accessing all the data in our database (just under $20 billion worth of deals since 2019) for a reasonable fee. Even more reasonable if you use this link and claim your reader’s discount. Talk to you soon (or maybe not so soon as I’ll be on a well-deserved break for a couple weeks)… Max