P1 Ventures, an early-stage, Pan-African VC, has completed the final close of its first $50 million institutional fund and welcomed African conglomerates, family offices, and partners at global VCs, alongside the World Bank’s IFC. Senior advisors include Index Ventures’ founding team members, Bernard Dalle and Emil Michael, former Uber CBO who scaled it globally.
With over $60 million now in AUM, P1 Ventures builds on a year of strong momentum in which it completed its largest-ever deal; co-investing as the only African VC alongside Accel into Morocco-based Nuitee’s $48 million Series A round. These achievements underscore P1 Ventures’ contrarian mission and validate its bold ‘Made in Africa’ thesis.
“We have strong conviction there will be billions of USD of value created by global companies that have been ‘made in Africa’. From Dakar to Nairobi, Cairo to Cape Town, we’re seeing founders combining local insights with global ambition,” said Mika Hajjar, Managing Partner at P1 Ventures. “These entrepreneurs are not just solving Africa’s problems – they’re creating models that the rest of the world can learn from
A contrarian thesis
P1 Ventures is a high-conviction investor on a contrarian mission to ensure capital across Africa is as widely distributed as its entrepreneurial talent. With African venture capital dropping for the second consecutive year, and global funding in decline, foreign investors are either retreating from the region or focusing on “safe bets” – tried-and-tested business models in established hubs like Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa.
P1 Ventures is instead doubling down, seizing the opportunity to partner with the next-generation of resilient and bold African visionaries. Founders who are reshaping the face of the continent now have a sharper focus on execution; they are building more capital-efficient, high-growth, and category-defining businesses.
Read also: Pan-African VC, P1 Ventures launches $50M fund to back early-stage startups
P1 Ventures uses proprietary AI-powered tools and a 10,000-company Pan-African database to identify promising tech startups. This data-driven approach allows them to spot winners early, track trends, and support portfolio companies as they scale. Their portfolio has created over 6,000 jobs in 20 countries, impacted 10+ million lives, and generated 35x follow-on capital per dollar invested. This strategy has also enabled P1 to successfully expand into key markets like Francophone Africa, home to companies like InstaDeep, Wave, and P1’s own Nuitee.
The African AI/Fintech Advantage
Africa’s potential comes from the unique advantages it has over developed markets. In developed markets, job protectionism, legacy regulations, and infrastructure can all hinder adoption. By contrast, adoption is supercharged in Africa, and other emerging markets, by necessity.
In fintech, Africa’s mobile-first population has made it a world leader in digital banking, with mobile money leapfrogging traditional card infrastructure. Regulatory advances are also fueling the rise of stablecoins. In AI, automation is addressing Africa’s continent-wide productivity and skills gaps, while offering vast opportunities to make sectors such as hospitality, future of work, and healthcare, more efficient and affordable. Africa’s low-income nations are rapidly replacing subscriptions with pay-per-use models to make tech more accessible, and its mobile-first population is primed to adopt scalable solutions.
This demand for disruption creates tremendous scope for African founders to import global “Uber-for-X” style business models to local markets. This was a key focus of P1 Ventures’ first proof-of-concept fund, which backed Algerian super app Yassir (now serving 8 million customers across six markets and raising a $150M Series B), and fintech Chari (the first Moroccan company to achieve a $100M valuation, secure a PSP license, and acquire a bank).
Yet as these innovations take hold and, as the ecosystem matures, so too does the opportunity. And while importing global models, in fintech especially, remains a focus for P1 Ventures, the fund is setting its sights on something even bigger: the global mega-trend of AI.
Built in Africa for the World
P1 Ventures is expanding its vision to back companies that are boldly “Built in Africa for the World.” Founded by an increasingly strong entrepreneurial talent pool from all corners of the continent, these companies are moving beyond importing models. They’re leveraging the continent’s innovation, with AI’s ability to transcend borders and sectors, to export their solutions on a global scale.
Several P1 portfolio companies demonstrate the fund’s knack for identifying promising founders. Morocco’s Nuitee, an AI-powered hotel booking platform with 240+ employees, partners with industry giants like Hilton and Sabre. Its founder, Med Benmansour, is a Silicon Valley-trained engineer and serial entrepreneur. Similarly, Egypt’s Gameball, a gamified loyalty platform serving 3,000+ customers globally, is led by repeat founder Ahmed Khairy, a seasoned product and business development expert. South Africa’s Salus, a one-click software deployment solution, is helmed by ex-Konga CTO Andrew Mori, who previously bootstrapped a company to $20M in annual revenue. Finally, Egypt’s StakPak, an AI copilot for non-DevOps engineers addressing Africa’s talent gap, was founded by US/Europe-trained DevOps engineer George Fahmy.
