Our Correspondent | Africa Guardian
In an exclusive interview with Business Insider Africa, Satoshi Shinada, Co-founder and Director of Kepple Africa Ventures Inc., delves into Africa’s venture capital landscape, comparing it with other regions and outlining his investment philosophy for African startups.
Challenges in Africa’s Venture Capital Landscape
Africa’s venture capital scene has faced turbulence in recent years. In 2023, total venture investments—including venture debt—fell to $4.5 billion across 603 deals, a sharp decline of $2 billion from the previous year. This downturn reflects broader economic pressures, including slow GDP growth, inflation, geopolitical tensions, and climate challenges.
Despite these hurdles, Africa remains a hub of opportunity, attracting investors like Shinada, who has supported over 50 startups, including Moniepoint, Moove, and Shuttlers, across West and North Africa. His investments aim to address critical gaps and foster innovation in the continent’s most dynamic markets.
Rethinking Africa’s Capital Structure
Shinada highlights the African VC ecosystem’s heavy reliance on European development finance institutions (DFIs), which often prioritize developmental impact over financial returns. This dependence, while beneficial in some respects, contrasts with ecosystems like Southeast Asia and India, where local capital markets and private funding play a more significant role.
“Africa needs a strong local capital market and a diverse flow of external funding,” Shinada emphasizes. He points to India’s vibrant domestic capital markets, which enable startups to secure funding locally and achieve IPO exits. Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s well-structured capital markets have accelerated the growth of its startup ecosystem.
Kepple Africa Ventures actively diversifies funding sources by engaging Japanese corporates, Asian investors, and local African partners, such as Nigeria’s Sterling Bank and family offices, through its joint venture with Veload Capital. This approach seeks to create a resilient and inclusive VC ecosystem tailored to Africa’s unique needs.
A Strategic Investment Philosophy
Kepple Africa Ventures adopts a sector-agnostic approach, focusing on startups addressing urgent, real-world challenges. Shinada stresses that Africa’s lower GDP per capita limits consumer spending on non-essential services, making it crucial for businesses to deliver high-impact, cost-effective solutions.
“We focus on the ‘social layer’—the infrastructure enabling businesses to thrive—such as payment systems and transportation networks,” he explains. This is followed by the “business layer,” which aims to improve efficiency and productivity for businesses, and the “individual layer,” driven by technology’s impact on daily life.
These interconnected layers, Shinada believes, unlock Africa’s immense economic potential by fostering innovation and sustainability.
What Makes a Startup Investable?
For Shinada, a startup’s success hinges on visionary founders with ambitious goals. “Without a big vision, growth is capped,” he asserts. While a solid business model and quick monetization strategy are essential, it is the founder’s ambition that drives exponential growth—essential in the high-risk, high-reward VC space.
He also advises startups to embrace operational complexity. “In Africa, technology alone doesn’t solve problems; it must integrate seamlessly into operations,” Shinada notes. He cites Moniepoint’s success in blending a robust tech layer with an extensive operational network as an example of this model in action.
As Africa’s payments sector nears saturation, Shinada sees untapped potential in other areas for founders willing to innovate and simplify technology to meet real-world needs.
The Road Ahead
To achieve sustainable growth, Africa must reduce its dependency on DFIs, cultivate robust local capital markets, and diversify its funding sources. By addressing these gaps, the continent’s tech ecosystem can continue to thrive, unlocking its vast economic potential and reshaping the global startup narrative.
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