GrowthAfrica ventures raise seed capital for expansion in East Africa and beyond.

NAIROBI, 13^th September 2019

GrowthAfrica, a leading accelerator that works with post-revenue African ventures by supporting high-impact, high-growth businesses that innovatively contribute to Africa’s social and economic progress, in different sectors through strategic advice and access to investments. For more information: www.growthafrica.com

Capital is a bottleneck for many growth-oriented businesses and delivering access to investments enables the entrepreneurs we work with better implement their growth plans. As GrowthAfrica, we are always fulfilled to see entrepreneurs and their businesses transform and scale through our accelerator that offers business analysis and implementation support.
Johnni Kjelsgaard,
CEO and Founder,
GrowthAfrica.

GrowthAfrica is pleased to announce that two of the companies that they have been supporting namely Kijani Limited and Bluewave have raised significant capital investments from two investors.

Founded in 2013 by Valerie Rogers Muigai and Muigai Ndoka, Kijani manufactures reusable cloth diapers, environmentally friendly bamboo soakers (liners) and moisturising body creams. The company’s mission is to create employment opportunities for women while also providing a good working environment for all its employees. Through GrowthAfrica’s Innovative accelerator programme linkage, RENEW’s Impact Angel Network (IAN) made its first-ever Ugandan investment in Kijani through their recently capitalised investment fund that was set up to invest in female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and Uganda.

GrowthAfrica has been very instrumental in our business journey. We were able to make a lot of positive changes in the business based on the training we received and feedback from other entrepreneurs in the programme. They have made my first experience with an investment firm, seamless and successful. We received assistance in evaluating if it was a good deal for Kijani by ensuring we were well prepared and supported during negotiations. This deal came at a time when we were seeing a lot of new growth opportunities but struggling to find the cash to fund this growth. We are so excited about this investment and what it will mean for the company and are so grateful to GrowthAfrica for connecting us to RENEW.
Valerie Muigai,
Founder and CEO,
Kijani Uganda Ltd

Bluewave, founded in 2016 by Adelaide Odhiambo is a technology-driven microinsurance company that is creating innovative mass market, microinsurance products accessible via mobile devices. Bluewave is passionate about disrupting the insurance industry in Africa to ensure that insurance is accessible to 1 billion Africans, using technology to make the claims process more efficient, accessible and most important to ensure that insurance is easier and better for all. Through GrowthAfrica, Bluewave secured investment from Samurai Incubate Africa, a Japanese venture capital that invests in seed-stage companies in Africa.

About GrowthAfrica

Since 2012 GrowthAfrica has accelerated more than 200 African ventures and from inception in 2002, worked with over 2,000 growing African businesses, supported in raising over USD 60 million in Investments, loans and grants, and created more than 30,000 jobs in Africa. GrowthAfrica works with growth-oriented entrepreneurs running post-revenue ventures and has offices in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Zambia and Ghana.

For more information on the accelerator programme and more news items please write to the Communications Lead Liz Kariuki on eka@growthafrica.com or call +254 (0) 735 283 462

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Please Note: GrowthAfrica is spelt as a single word with a Capital G and a Capital A

Tags: Africa Investor, Business development, business growth, Ethiopia, investment, Kenya, uganda, Women in Leadership