Teranga Capital is anchored by French impact firm Investisseurs & Partenaires and provides equity and quasi-equity for small and medium sized-businesses in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. The firm invested in Senegal-based Maraz, which produces leather goods, selling through outlets in Dakar, Abidjan and Kigali. Maraz runs a training program dubbed M Academy, which trains between 300 and 500 people annually on leathercraft, who can work for Maraz or launch their own ventures.
Teranga’s private equity arm now holds a portfolio of nearly 14 companies and is looking at backing over a dozen this year. The firm has supported 40 companies in total, including those that have received early-stage support and acceleration.
“We’re seeing more startups and more companies,” Teranga’s Mohamed Ngom told ImpactAlpha. “The ecosystem is very dynamic.”
Evergreen
Teranga has raised €3 million ($3.5 million) out of its €10 million goal, from I&P, FONSIS which is the sovereign wealth fund of Senegal, high net worth individuals and the Dutch-funded Challenge Fund for Youth Employment, which launched in 2019 to increase youth employment over 7 years in the Middle East, North Africa, West Africa and Horn of Africa.
Teranga had previously secured €6 million which it deployed between 2016 and 2023. (See, Teranga Capital: Taking risks to build an impact ecosystem in West Africa). “LPs are very satisfied with our level of investment and with the portfolio that we’ve created,” Ngom said. “The thing is, the Western African market of private equity is not really liquid because we do not have enough buyout funds.”
Still Teranga has notched two exits, identifying exiting to high net worth individuals in West Africa as one of its key options. The firm achieved a partial exit via secondary sale in 2024, from an AI-enabled language translation company with applications in making digital financial services available in local languages.
The exit was to the family offices of two football players of West African origin, Aurélien Tchouaméni who plays for Real Madrid and Jules Koundé who plays for Barcelona. The two had come in at the seed stage with Teranga and wanted to up their stake at the Series A round.
