IFC invests in African VC fund
IFC invests in African VC fund
P1 Ventures Fund II welcomes the IFC as its first public institutional investor.
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Africa-focused venture capital firm P1 Ventures has completed a second close of $35 million for its Fund II. The fund welcomed the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as its first public institutional investor.
P1 Ventures aims to support founders utilising emerging technologies, such as generative AI, to disrupt mainstream industries, from healthcare to retail and agriculture. It’s particularly focused on backing repeat founders and experienced operators that have validated products, proven and in-demand software business models that can scale up capital-efficiently, and which have early traction with customers.
Hisham Halbouny, P1 Ventures co-founder and managing partner, said: “We’re seeing an unprecedented rate of innovation, high-quality founders and strong resilience across Africa. As international investors retreat, we’ve stayed contrarian. We’ve leaned into the most attractive investment opportunities and believe this will be one of the best vintage years for regional venture capital funds. Similar to what happened in Latin America a couple of years ago, local VCs have a great opportunity to back great founders at better entry valuations as markets begin to normalise.”
Recognising the potential of AI in its own processes – and to tap into the emerging trend being seen across VC – P1 Ventures recently hired a data scientist to integrate AI into its workflow and investment processes. In doing so, P1 Ventures aims to enhance its investment processing capacity, identify promising opportunities more efficiently, and lead the way in terms of AI-powered deal flow on the continent.
Mikael Hajjar, P1 Ventures co-founder and managing partner, said: “We’ve decided to allocate meaningful resources in building our in-house data science tools and processes that will augment our investment team by sourcing and screening more programmatically. As far as we know, no firm has built anything like that in Africa yet and we believe this will help us pick up signal from the noise by focusing on a few themes such as repeat founders. We can also leverage these tools to create more value to our portfolio companies.”
Olivier Buyoya, IFC’s regional director for West Africa, said: "By supporting market-disrupting digital business models, our investment in P1 Ventures aims to increase the competitiveness and efficiency of traditional markets in key sectors to boost inclusive economic growth across the continent. More importantly, our work will help strengthen venture capital ecosystems in Africa, especially in Francophone Africa markets underserved by global venture capital.”
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