The New York and Côte d’Ivoire-based climate impact fund invests in African companies supporting sustainable agriculture, food systems, renewable energy and land restoration.
It participated in a $200,000 funding round for Laboratoires Adeba, an organic skin and haircare company, also based in Abidjan, that sources its ingredients from a network of female farmers. CDC-CI Capital, the venture capital and small business investment arm of Côte d’Ivoire’s public finance agency, also invested.
The deal is Barka Capital’s second organic cosmetics investment since March, when it took part in a $1 million funding round for Ghana-based Lyvv Cosmetics. Both Adeba and Lyvv use locally-sourced shea and cocoa butter, palm kernel oil and other sustainably produced ingredients.
“This is exactly what we are built to back: founder-led, locally rooted, internationally competitive,” the Barka team said.
Restoration GP
Barka is in the market with a targeted $20 million fund. It secured $4 million last year from World Resources Institute Africa. WRI’s funding complemented an $8 million investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation and a $4 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in late 2023.
To develop its pipeline, Barka runs a land restoration accelerator program, whose latest cohort supported 21 companies from the Rift Valley in Kenya, six from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, and four companies from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire’s Cocoa Belt.
Barka is also an implementation partner for the Greenpreneur Incubation Program in Côte d’Ivoire, an initiative of Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute and backed by Korea’s development agency.
