AVPA sees Africa risk-capital gap despite $4tn in assets

AVPA Chief Executive Frank Aswani said Africa holds about $4 trillion in domestic assets but lacks risk capital, in a Nov. 5 RootsToFoods Capital Series interview with DRK’s Kanini Mutooni.

The gap matters because Aswani put the annual Sustainable Development Goals financing shortfall at about $300 billion, while DRK said it backs early-stage social entrepreneurs with up to $300,000 in unrestricted, multi-year funding.

“We’re not short of money. We’re short of risk capital,” Aswani, chief executive officer of the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance, said in the episode. The interview was hosted by Ovidiu Bujorean, chief executive officer of OviBees Ventures.

Mutooni, Africa Director and Senior Managing Director at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, said DRK looks for founders addressing the right problem, able to absorb feedback and prepared for future fundraising. DRK is a venture philanthropy fund, using patient capital and hands-on support for social enterprises.

AVPA works with investors rather than funding entrepreneurs directly. Aswani said it helps capital providers deploy money “better, faster, cheaper and with more impact,” including through investor capability-building, a deal-share platform and an AI data tool tracking capital flows by sector and instrument.

Mutooni pointed to Keep IT Cool, a Kenyan company offering solar-powered cold storage and cold-chain logistics for fishing communities, as an example of early risk capital. When DRK found the company, she said it had just begun producing revenue, had one hands-off Japanese venture investor, lacked a board and talent plan, and had unclear unit economics, meaning uncertain revenue and cost dynamics per transaction.

“A lot of impact investors in our ecosystem run away from anything that sounds capex heavy,” Mutooni said. “For us, we were attracted because we felt this was a really difficult problem to solve.”

DRK invested through a convertible note, debt that can later become equity, because an early-stage valuation was hard to set, Mutooni said. DRK then helped with financial modelling, hiring plans, board formation and performance indicators, and within about 18 months three new catalytic impact investors had joined.

About two years after DRK’s investment, Keep IT Cool was one of five winners of the 2024 Earthshot Prize and received the £1 million Build a Waste-Free World award in Cape Town. Mutooni said that roughly two and a half to three years after DRK backed it at pre-seed stage, the company is on a path toward financial sustainability.

The interview did not provide Keep IT Cool’s revenue, valuation or profitability figures. AVPA’s network was not involved in DRK’s investment, but Aswani described the case as the kind of model he wants more investors to replicate.

Aswani said AVPA is developing catalytic-capital collaboratives, with about 30% of seats reserved for African participants who learn by taking part in investment decisions and payment tranching. Mutooni said DRK now invests only in founders local to the communities they serve, after pipelines she saw a decade ago could be as much as 80% expatriate-led.

Both speakers called for more hands-on catalytic investors. “Let’s all stop doing our own separate diligence. Let’s do joint diligence together,” Mutooni said.

Next dates

AVPA’s 2026 annual conference is scheduled for Nov. 9 to Nov. 11 in Cape Town, providing a checkable forum for whether its catalytic-capital agenda draws more investor participation.

RootsToFoods said the first edition of Capital In Motion, with insights from early-stage company Keep IT Cool, follows on Nov. 5. The series said companion pieces are collected at rootstofoods.com.

Source: RootsToFoods Capital Series interview distributed by AllAfrica Global Media, Nov. 5, 2026.