Proparco, a subsidiary of the French authorities’s growth company, is instantly investing in African start-ups so as to help innovation on the continent and safe returns for the company, in a transfer that displays an more and more business outlook as official growth help wanes.
Talking at Africa Day 2025, held at Sciences Po in Paris, Proparco’s CEO Françoise Lombard mentioned: “Proparco has dedicated very sturdy help to the African innovation system – we have now supported nearly all of pan-African enterprise capital funds, equivalent to TLCom and Partech, but additionally extra regional funds. Proparco has additionally supported round 40 startups instantly.”
Proparco’s direct investments in African startups vary from pre-series A funding as much as Collection D, with investments ranging from €1m. Startups should reveal a minimum of €400,000 in annual revenues and the power to broaden exterior their home market.
Proparco has beforehand invested in main African companies equivalent to Nigerian fintech unicorn Moniepoint, with Lombard noting that the agency is especially thinking about investing in firms within the fintech, healthtech, agtech, and cleantech industries.
Support cuts change growth focus
Lombard famous that cuts in overseas support are altering the best way growth businesses are working.
“Official growth help is lowering and, now, individuals don’t wish to speak about help anymore – they wish to speak about investments,” she mentioned.
The OECD initiatives a 9 to 17% drop in official growth help in 2025, compounding a 9% drop in 2024. 4 of the foremost Western suppliers of growth funding – France, Germany, the UK, and the USA – all reduce funding final 12 months and are set to do once more in 2025.
In the case of supporting the personal sector, growth businesses have historically been centered on actions equivalent to serving to business banks to mobilise capital by offering ensures and technical help.
Lombard prompt that this strategy is now evolving on account of cuts in growth funding – which in France have been pushed by sluggish progress and an more and more severe debt disaster.
However whereas growth businesses could also be much less reluctant to speak about business returns than previously, Lombard mentioned Proparco’s help and financing for personal sector gamers in Africa stays centered on three strategic pillars: “defending the planet, lowering inequalities, and sustaining extra resilient progress.”
The precedence, she mentioned, could be to put money into companies that “are impact-orientated and additional the sustainable growth targets.”
