Podcast: Exploring the drivers of venture capital investment in Africa
A conversation with Fadel Jaoui, Omolola Amoussou, and Francis Kemeze from the African Development Bank
According to the 2020 Venture Capital (VC) in Africa report by AVCA, the total value of reported VC deals on the continent between 2016 and 2020 was US$5bn. And in 2020 alone, the volume of deals more than doubled to 319 reported deals from just 140 in 2019. Looking at the data, venture capital in Africa is having its moment. However, Africa represents less than 1% of VC funding globally as of 2020.
In this episode of PE Talks Africa, we talk to three economists from the African Development Bank (AfDB) — Dr Fadel Jaoui, Dr Omolola Amoussou, and Dr Francis Kemeze.
Fadel, Lola and Francis conducted an empirical analysis of the venture capital drivers using a dataset of African economies over the 2014–2019 period. Their research finds that in Africa, digital infrastructure plays a significant role in shaping a favourable environment for VC in Africa to thrive, in addition to enabling regulatory frameworks, institutional factors, market size, and corporate governance.
From the potential to engineer ‘clusters’ for innovation and knowledge exchange in Africa, to bringing informal economy stakeholders into the VC conversation, our guests address the factors, trends and issues that continue to influence the flow of early-stage funding across Africa.
About the co-authors
Fadel Jaoui is the Acting Manager at Macro-economics Policy, Forecasting and Research (ECMR) Department at AfDB. Omolola Amoussou is a Principal Research Economist at ECMR2, and Francis Kemeze is a Senior Research Economist at ECMR2 in the ECMR Department of the African Development Bank, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
Disclaimer: All views shared during the podcast recording are the authors’ and do not reflect the views of AfDB as an organisation.
