Persistent wishes everyone Happy Holidays and a Prosperous 2025!
2024 has been an exciting year for Persistent. As we build our investment pipeline for our upcoming Africa Climate Venture Builder Fund (ACV Fund), we eagerly anticipate achieving the Fund’s first close in 2025.
In preparation to kick off the ACV Fund, we welcomed six new members to our team. Five have joined our Kenya-based team, bringing their expertise to roles across our Tech and Investment teams, as well as one of our advisory mandates. We have also expanded our Legal team with a new hire based in Nigeria.
Our investments this year focused both on further building companies in our current portfolio and adding new companies. We are particularly excited about our increased investments in Altech and Ecobodaa and our new investments in AgTech company Agrails and carbon-reducing logistics company Lori.
We are excited about a number of developments in our portfolio, including:
- Candi, our C&I company in South Africa and India, which closed its 38 Million USD Series C equity round and exceeded its African growth targets.
- Beacon Power Services, our energy efficiency portfolio company in Nigeria, which closed a large Series A equity round to expand into Eastern and Southern Africa.
- Altech, our residential solar, clean cooking, and e-mobility business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is rolling out its e-motorcycle taxi business in 2025.
- Tri, our electric 3-wheeler business in Tanzania, which was selected as the only e-mobility company in the Accelerate Africa programme and is gearing up to close a funding round in 2025 to expand in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. We continue to provide strategic support and Venture Building to Tri.
- Ecobodaa, our electric motorcycle business in Kenya, showcased its proprietary Safiri platform at the September 2024 African E-Mobility Week held in Nairobi and continues to work on accelerating interoperability in the 2-wheeler e-mobility space in Africa.
We are also proud of our investment advisory work on our two large mandates: the $125 million Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund (EEGF) and the $30 million investment window of the Clean Energy and Energy Inclusion Fund for Africa (CEI Africa). EEGF currently supports 13 portfolio companies with subordinated debt. Persistent, as fund advisor, provides deal origination, due diligence, and operational “engine room” (Venture Building) support to help investees scale.
CEI Africa has made significant progress over the year, committing substantial capital to investments and partnerships. It has onboarded Lendahand, Energise Africa, and Trine as co-investment partners, and made direct investments in companies such as Inspira Farms Cooling, Kudura, and EWIA. CEI is continuing to expand its portfolio by adding new crowdfunding platforms and energy-focused investments.
To all of our shareholders, stakeholders, family, friends, and colleagues, we wish you and your loved ones a happy and healthy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.
The Persistent Team