A new innovation to spur entrepreneurs into big names to rival the likes of Dangite has been introduced in Nigeria.
Former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday, announced that his venture capital/private equity firm, Afri-Venture Capital Company Limited, is set to make this a reality and shall commence operations in 2024.
In a post on X, El-Rufai said through his firm, shall finance, nurture, and mentor Nigerian innovators and entrepreneurs to become the next Dangote Group shortly.
The workings of Afri-Venture Capital will see a significant partnership with the private sector with private sector including the co-founder of Excredite Consulting Limited, Eyo Ekpo, among others.
I can confirm that our VC-PE firm, Afri-Venture Capital Company Ltd will by the Grace of God, begin operations initially in Abuja in January 2024 with Jimi Lawal, Hafiz Bayero, Eyo Ekpo and Kabir Yabo as founding directors and initial shareholders. I am privileged to be the part-time Chairman of the Board.
Please, pray for our success and the Nigerian (and in the near future African) innovators and entrepreneurs we hope to finance, nurture, and mentor to be the Dangote Group of the future,” the former governor wrote on X.
El Rufai believes starting with a take off funding of 100 million dollars of which he is staking 2 million dollars already for startups in Nigeria, particularly those in the Kaduna tech ecosystem, is the needed investment.
What young people need is essentially mentoring and financing to get things going. They develop the idea and see whether it is viable. And we will open doors for them because they don’t have contact.
They don’t know or have access to ministers, presidents, or regulatory agencies. We do. We know the minefields that they have to navigate. We know that they need to give them appointments and we can provide them with the startup funding and in return we take an equity position.
We don’t want to take your business; we want to develop it. But if we take the risk on you, we will take a percentage of the business,” El-Rufai told BusinessDay in Marrakech, Morocco, in November during the Africa Investment Forum.
The investors will mostly be those who believe in us but don’t have the capacity or the time to do the analysis and evaluation. But they trust our judgment and they will come with us
That’s according to El-Rufai.
(C) ControlTV 2023.
