Founders Factory Africa Secures $113 Million to Propel African Tech Founders’ Growth

Founders Factory Africa has secured an additional $113 million in funding to scale its model to better serve founders across the African tech ecosystem.

The additional support from the Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an impact fund within the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank, Small Foundation and Netcare. The support will enable Founders Factory Africa to scale its model and better serve technology-led start-ups and founders across the African continent.

“We are excited to have new and dynamic funding, which follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank Group, Small Foundation and Netcare Group,” says Alina Truhina, co-founder of Founders Factory Africa.

Since its inception in 2018, Founders Factory Africa has catalysed the trajectory of over 55 tech start-ups across the continent. The additional funding affirms Founders Factory Africa’s hybrid investment model of combining capital and operational support and will help the early-stage investor further iterate this model by:

• Becoming sector-agnostic  in its investment with founders who prioritise business fundamentals   and will also double down on addressing the gender imbalance in the ecosystem.
• Broadening its capital investment offering to include non-dilutive capital, supporting the continent’s need for different capital deployment types across the venture maturity curve.
• Strengthening Founders Factory Africa’s internal capacity to continue to provide its portfolio of start-ups with the best venture-building support on the continent.

“Come build with us,” says Founders Factory Africa CEO, Bongani Sithole. “Moving Africa forward requires more of us to support tech-driven, solution-oriented ventures that have the potential to scale and make an impact at speed. Our role as Founders Factory Africa is to provide founders with the funding, knowledge, and hands-on venture building support they need to achieve commercial success and create outsized, systematic impact.”