Sango Capital, a leading investment management firm, continues to strengthen its commitment to delivering superior risk-adjusted returns through strategic investments across Africa. With a focus on both fund and direct investments, Sango Capital is well-positioned to tap into the continent's growing economic potential.

Over the past decade, Sango Capital has established itself as a key player in Africa's investment landscape. The firm’s approach is rooted in deep market knowledge, rigorous analysis, and a strong network of local partners. This strategy has enabled Sango Capital to identify and capitalize on opportunities that drive value for its investors.

Sango Capital’s investment philosophy is centered on a long-term view, with a particular emphasis on sectors that are poised for growth, including financial services, infrastructure, and consumer goods. By leveraging its expertise and experience, the firm seeks to create lasting impact not only for its investors but also for the communities in which it operates.

Fund Performance: Sango Capital’s flagship fund has consistently outperformed its benchmark, delivering double-digit returns over the last five years.

Direct Investments: The firm has successfully executed several direct investments in high-growth sectors, including a recent stake in a leading fintech company that is revolutionizing mobile banking in East Africa.

Sustainability: Sango Capital is committed to responsible investing, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. The firm actively seeks out investments that contribute to sustainable development in Africa.

Conclusion: As Africa continues to present new opportunities, Sango Capital remains dedicated to its mission of delivering superior risk-adjusted returns. The firm’s unique blend of local insight, global expertise, and a disciplined investment approach ensures that it is well-positioned to navigate the complexities of the African market and deliver value to its investors.

Sango Capital Expands Investment Portfolio in Africa

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the venture capital ecosystem in Africa transitioned from a nascent angel-investor-driven framework to a robust ecosystem able to support companies from the pre-seed stage through to Series D, strategic sale/IPO and beyond. An opportunity emerged for Sango to invest in an emerging sector at scale, starting with managers in regional VC hubs including Lagos, Cairo, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi.

African startup activity is dominated by the application of proven technologies to a number of industry verticals in Africa, including agritech, e-commerce, edtech, energy tech, fintech, healthtech, insuretech, logistics, media and mobility. For most startups, technology risk is low, allowing founders and management teams to focus on their commercial plans, speeding the path to profitability. A common theme in the space is providing African technology-enabled solutions that allow the continent to leapfrog legacy systems in such industries as finance, education and health, moving directly to technology-enabled services on mobile platforms. In some cases, technology is increasingly being used to provide cost-effective solutions that are easily portable across both developed and other emerging markets.

Fund investments: Having tracked the development of the VC ecosystem from its early stages, Sango was able to move quickly to establish a number of relationships with experienced, well-networked technology investors across the continent. Sango’s network of relationships allowed for robust cross-checking of GPs, providing comfort that selected firms had strong deal flow, an ability to add value to portfolio companies, and the influence to achieve exit events through strategic sale, the entry of private growth-stage investors or accessing the public market. Emphasis was also placed on the back-office capacities of young managers, ensuring their ability to absorb and deploy institutional capital in a disciplined fashion.  

Sango has positioned itself as a strategic co-investor in a number of high-growth companies. This has created opportunities for enhanced risk-adjusted returns for Sango Tech-Enabled Growth by following on with investment in some of the mid-stage companies that are growing into Africa’s technology champions. Sango has added value to such companies through introductions to key talent and financing sources, helping with geographic expansion, as well as making Sango’s operating partners and advisors available to help solve portfolio companies’ pressing operational issues.

Sango has positioned itself as an investor in the secondary market for venture-stage equity. Through key partnerships, Sango has been able to take positions in later-stage private companies where early investors were seeking liquidity for equity stakes prior to an IPO or sale event. With such secondary investments, Sango gets exposure to companies that have proven business models but which also have substantial growth runways ahead of them.

Sango Tech-Enabled Growth has provided our investors with diversified exposure to an emerging investable set of African technology companies, with a long period of expected supernormal growth ahead.

Sango Private Equity II (“Fund II”) and Sango Private Equity III (“Fund III”).

Building an Innovation Portfolio: Sango Tech-Enabled Growth, Pan-African

Sundry Markets operates Market Square, Nigeria's fastest-growing grocery retail chain. In a country where most retail activity is conducted informally, Sundry Markets offers a venue for shoppers to enjoy an affordable premium experience, fulfilling basic needs for home cooking, home care and personal care products.

In 2015, Sango backed a talented and proven entrepreneur, Mr. Ebele Enunwa, who established the first store that year. In 2022, Sango executed a partial exit via a sale to a financial partner, returning more than 5 times the original USD investment to its investors, notwithstanding the Nigerian naira's depreciation of more than 50% against the USD over that period. Sundry Markets continues to enjoy significant organic growth and Sango is supporting the management team with various initiatives with the goal to reach 50 stores by the end of 2025. Sango is represented on the company's board

Sundry Markets illustrates a key opportunity available in many African markets: taking a mature industry from advanced economies (in this case, grocery retail) and rolling it out in a country where the industry is at an earlier stage, providing substantial room for growth.

Sango Capital Partners (“Fund I”) and Sango Private Equity III (“Fund III”). 

Startup: Sundry Markets dba Market Square, West Africa

Kazyon is a discount retailer in North Africa, with operations in Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia and plans to expand to other countries in Africa and the Middle East. The company is expanding its store footprint rapidly, currently operating more than 1000 stores across its markets. The company’s business model (limited product assortment with low pricing) has been deployed successfully in many advanced and emerging economies.

Sango participated in two funding rounds in 2023 and 2024 alongside DPI, one of Sango's investee fund partners, as well as other development finance and global commercial investors to support Kazyon’s expansion. Sango continues to support the company in view of our extensive relationships across Africa and grocery retail experience in other African countries. Charles Mwebeiha, partner at Sango sits on Kayzon's board.

Kazyon is an example of applying a business playbook used in many advanced and emerging economies, where a formal retailer offering everyday low prices in a clean, simple store layout can expand across a market to serve value-conscious consumers. 

Sango Strategic Equity Vehicle (“SSEV”) and Sango Private Equity III (“Fund III”).

Growth equity: Kazyon, North Africa

In 2019, Sango partnered with Medu Capital to establish the Medu Industrial Partnership as a limited life investment vehicle, that executed a secondary end-of-life acquisition of the 3 remaining assets from Medu Fund II. These assets were conglomerated into the South African Industrial Group (SAIG) a diversified industrials company that has expanded its activities into the manufacture and distribution of engineering components for the mining and automotive industries, steel rolls and copper and plastic tubing.

Sango underwrote the equity purchase for the buy-out of the assets from the limited partners in Medu II which effectively allowed that fund to return all the outstanding capital to its investors and wind down the fund in an orderly manner. The transaction provided existing fund LPs with the opportunity to receive liquidity much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

Sango and Medu’s thesis was to build an industrial platform through organic and inorganic growth which would be a more attractive target to strategic or financial buyers. As part of the transaction, a new CEO was appointed to run the consolidated group. In 2021 SAIG completed a bolt-on acquisition which had material synergies with the group.

Growth has been robust during Sango’s ownership period and the investment thesis delivered largely as expected.

This investment is an example of the opportunities that become available at the intersection of Sango’s deep relationship model within the private equity eco-system and the scarcity of innovative commercial capital. The SAIG acquisition enabled fresh and aligned capital to create a longer investment horizon for Medu and Sango to create value in assets that Sango and the GP knew well, while also unlocking liquidity for LPs who were happy to sell the assets at a reasonable discount to a party that they knew had the capacity to execute the transaction in a limited time frame.

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