US Billionaire and Africa’s Richest Man, Dangote Back $500M Investment for African-Focused Initiative

Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote, the Chairman of Dangote Group, has partnered with some billionaire investors in the United States to provide $500 million in funding specifically for developing Africa.

Bloomberg said that on Wednesday, a team from Carlyle Group Inc. said they received funding from Aliko Dangote and a prominent U.S. private equity firm to establish the Alterra Capital Fund, which was created specifically to assist African investments.

The private equity firm has set its goal of raising $500 million in the coming months, even though they had a total of $140 million at the start of the fundraising.

In the meeting with Bloomberg, Genevieve Sangundi said that the partners of this new contract are the co-founders of Carlyle, namely David Rubenstein and Bill Conway.

However, Sangundi said Alterra intends to disburse the funds across different sectors, including healthcare, technology, telecommunications, logistics, and consumer retail.

She said,

• This is an excellent time to put money to work in Africa, as many current macro themes provide attractive potential investment opportunities.

• For example, the power challenges across Africa provide opportunities to invest in private distributed power solutions, while technology continues to drive Africa’s digital transformation rapidly.

Alterra's fund has also attracted investment from notable institutions such as Standard Bank Group Ltd., International Finance Corp., Norfund AS, Germany's Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft GmbH, and Allianz SE's AfricaGrow fund, as noted by Sangudi.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Carlyle announced that it was going to transfer a $700 million fund to sub-Saharan Africa to invest in startups in Africa. 

With a diversified portfolio, Alterra has successfully divested six companies, delivering returns of approximately $600 million to its investors, as stated by Sangudi. Their portfolio encompasses a total fund of $1 billion invested across 23 companies spanning the African continent, Bloomberg reported.