Eric Osiakwan
The yr is 2010, a younger Eric Osiakwan is engaged in two experiments; getting the West Africa Backhaul Firm (WABco) off the bottom as an entrepreneur in the course of the day and backing early-stage tech startups by evening. Over the following three years, the previous faces main headwinds while the latter takes off, and with it his profession transition from entrepreneur to angel investor. A couple of well-meaning associates cautioned me in opposition to investing within the hitherto unknown world of early-stage tech. They noticed it as a certain path to shedding the few cents I had revamped the course of a decade and a half, constructing Web Service Suppliers (ISPs), Web Providers Suppliers Associations (ISPAs), Web eXchange Factors (IXPs), Web eXchange Factors Associations (IXPAs) and Fiber Cable Firms (FCC) throughout Africa.
My first legacy undertaking, constructing the ISPs, ISPAs, IXPs and IXPAs culminated within the Africa ISP Affiliation (AfrISPA), a corporation I co-founded and run with William Stucke from South Africa, Brian Longwe from Kenya and others. Originated by the Midway Proposition, our flagship undertaking , the Africa Web eXchange System (AXIS) is now operated and funded totally beneath the auspices of the African Union (AU) – sure, we bought the AU to implement a non-public sector undertaking inside the Program on Infrastructure Growth for Africa (PIDA) beneath Agenda 2063. My second legacy undertaking was as a founding member of The East Africa Marine Methods (TEAMS) with Dr. Bitange Ndemo, then Everlasting Secretary on the Ministry of Data and Communication Know-how (ICT) in Kenya and others. Dr Ndemo invited me after studying the Open Entry Mannequin that Anders Comstedt, Russell Southwood and myself had authored for the WorldBank by the company of Infodev. TEAMS was the primary Open Entry Mannequin cable constructed between 2007 and 2008 when Kenya was experiencing an election disaster. Immediately, twenty subsea cables have been constructed throughout the continent utilizing this mannequin.
Again then, after I went to mattress every evening, my pillow would urge me to give attention to the tail winds and after I did, I slept nicely. It got here to cross that in March of 2013, I used to be invited by the World Financial institution as an angel investor to their international innovation summit in East London, South Africa. On the occasion, Andile Ngcaba, thirty-five entrepreneurs and I might co-founded Angel Africa Listing – a community of angel traders to again these founders. We then determined to launch Angel Honest Africa (AFA) because the flagship deal making occasion to convey the angel traders and entrepreneurs collectively – to do offers. This was made potential by a partnership with Jamie Clyde of the Sluggish Lounge, Ross Douglas and Cobi Labuscagne of the Joburg Arts Honest. We tagged the primary occasion on 26th September 2013 on the Sandton Conference Centre, “the artwork of rising enterprise earlier than the enterprise of arts”. This could give the artwork patrons a likelihood to put money into these rising companies earlier than their enterprise of shopping for artwork.
After taking the occasion to Nigeria in 2014, Ghana in 2015, Kenya in 2016, Ivory Coast in 2017, Mozambique in 2018, Tanzania in 2019, Senegal in 2020 (digital attributable to covid), Uganda in 2021 (cancelled to the Ebola scare) and Mauritius in 2022 (cancelled once more attributable to a hurricane), AFA lastly turned ten in 2023 (aka AFA@10) with a celebratory occasion in Cape City, South Africa. We went again to South Africa the place it began however to a unique metropolis. Cape City was a welcoming metropolis for our tenth anniversary celebrations.
In 2013, after the primary AFA occasion, it grew to become clear to me that I wanted a car to deal with and propel my investments so in early 2014, I got down to set up Chanzo Capital in Mauritius as an funding agency. Chanzo is a Swahili phrase that means “early stage” which is the character of the agency constructed on the premise of “backing early-stage African founders who’re constructing tech ventures which might be constructing the digital financial system in Africa beginning with the KINGS (Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa). Our Startup technique was to determine these early-stage founders from the annual AFA occasions, construct an funding conviction, take a leap of religion and coalesce different traders in our orbit to co-invest. On a deal-by-deal foundation, we noticed ourselves investing in sixteen startups by 2020 with 4 strike outs – making up Fund One which at present has a Internet Asset Worth (NAV) of $50M representing 10X.
Throughout covid, we began our second fund beneath our Startup technique taking the identical kind with just a few deviations based mostly on the learnings from Fund One. For instance, we began backing second time founders which we by no means did in fund One. In Fund Two, we additionally backed founders who had left their company careers to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions after gaining some monetary safety and a variety of expertise within the company world. These founders had been considerably completely different from these with out company expertise and people doing it for the primary time. We additionally ventured in Fund Two outdoors the KINGS by dipping our toes within the waters of Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. On the finish of 2023, we had 16 investments in our second fund beneath our Startup technique.
Among the ventures from our first fund are worthwhile and began inflecting – rising outdoors their unique nation of operation. As we noticed this phenomenon, we began realizing a scaleup alternative as the following step for these ventures. So we launched our Scaleup technique which is primarily to offer Capital, Capability and Group (CCC) as a bundled service to startup ventures who wish to scaleup in Africa. As we rejoice our tenth anniversary as a agency in 2024, we’re grateful for our success in our Startup technique with two funds and we’re going to construct on that by shifting to gear two with our Scaleup technique which might give attention to scaling ventures into a number of nations to make them large enough to be acquired and or listed. Scaling up African tech ventures aka constructing African tech multi-nationals shall be Chanzo Capital’s focus over the following decade. I might be writing significantly about it, and that is my introduction to the topic. Keep tuned!
