Kuramo Capital Shares Plans to Invest $150M in African Female-led Funds

A Sub-Saharan African (SSA) investment company, Kuramo Capital Management, has announced plans to invest $150 million over the next 10 years to promote female-led businesses.

The investment will be provided through its Moremi Platform, a three-pillar initiative that includes an accelerator program, a warehousing/lending facility, and a Fund of Funds in an effort to support gender-equitable fund management and empower the next generation of African women’s businesses.

Wale Adeosun, the CEO and founder of Kuramo, claims that the program will address the enormous financial and knowledge gap for women in business, a significant impediment to the inclusive, long-term economic and social growth of African nations. This involves enhancing the abilities of female fund managers, who will afterwards aid in fostering the expansion of women-owned businesses.

“We believe that, just as we were able to address gaps with African GPs (fund managers) in the past, we can achieve a similarly catalytic impact with our gender lens initiative,” he says.

Kuramo has revealed the first cohort of the accelerator program, which also acts as a platform for technical help, capacity building, and mentorship and targets 40 female fund managers and entrepreneurs each year.

The accelerator program addresses the knowledge gap, particularly for female fund managers in Africa, by providing a structured curriculum for capacity building, technical help, and mentoring for women in business.

“We are thrilled by the traction as we launch The Accelerator Program at such a pivotal point in Africa’s investing narrative. Women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of the investment sector, even if there has been an increase in the flow of finance to Africa. By assisting female-led African private equity and venture capital funds, we hope to remove this barrier and enhance the ecosystem, according to Sarah Ngamau, managing director of the Moremi Fund.

According to the World Economic Forum, Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest proportion of women entrepreneurs in the world, with women accounting for 58% of the continent’s self-employed people. Africa needs policies that highlight gender-smart investment practices in order to build on this solid basis.

“At Kuramo money and Kuramo Foundation for Sustainable Development, we truly think that investing in female-led and gender-diverse fund managers is the fastest approach to unlock money for female entrepreneurs and gender-smart firms at scale. We are thrilled to support Pan-African female-led funds’ inclusive economic empowerment, says Sarah.

Since its founding in 2011, Kuramo has raised more than $3.5 billion to assist more than 200 businesses and produce more than 50,000 employment in Africa.

The company’s main objective is building long-term capital value to support sustainable business growth in a range of economic sectors.

According to Shaka Kariuki, Co-CEO & Chief Investment Officer, Kuramo Capital, the Moremi Accelerator Program is a crucial component of the company’s ambition to catalyze the gender-equitable capital development necessary to drive Africa’s socioeconomic change.

“To create wealth and achieve long-term, sustainable capital growth, Kuramo’s strategy leverages its position in Africa. The beginning of this accelerator program “confirms our dedication to growing our value across the continent of Africa,” he claims.

“We remain committed to our mission of encouraging the growth of funds that will ultimately produce value and offer investors risk-adjusted returns,” he continues. At the same time, we are dedicated to providing sustainable solutions to the communities where we work.

Shaka sees the accelerator program as an illustration of Kuramo’s role to selling Africa as a desirable location for foreign investment. There were not many investors on the continent putting money into African Fund managers before to Kuramo’s arrival.

“But since Kuramo’s arrival, we have been able to anchor and fund more than 15 funds across Sub-Saharan Africa, which has helped to alleviate some of the concerns related to investing on the continent,” the company said. We will address the issues that African female fund managers and entrepreneurs face through the Moremi Accelerator Program.