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By Eric Osiakwan, Winnie Kimathi and Tinyiko Valoyi
Some of the speakers, investors and entrepreneurs at AFA@12 Launch in Kenya
Since its well-publicized inception in 2013, Angel Fair Africa (AFA) has been hosting a successful yearly event that brings selected entrepreneurs to pitch to a room of curated investors with the intent of doing deals.[1] The event has resulted in about $10M of deals, which attracted other investments and generated 10X the original deals over its eleven years of existence.
RELATED: Angel Fair Africa makes historic U.S. debut in New York to connect African startups with global investors
It boasts of a unique formula that matches entrepreneurs with investors in a 1:2 or 1:3 and in some cases 1:5 ratio – this sometimes results in the investors banding together into groups or syndicates to invest. AFA has created communities of entrepreneurs and investors in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Mozambique where it has been held.
The event has helped create local angel investment groups and cross pollinated some of these groups in the different countries. It has also resulted in non-financial deals like mentorship, partnership, sales and cross border trade.
The success of AFA 2024, hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, caught the attention of the Graca Machel Trust (GMT), which reached out to Chanzo Capital (CC) to partner for this year’s edition. GMT is sponsoring a gender lens investment fund under the auspices of Afrishela with a focus on catalyzing early-stage investment into women led and owned businesses across the continent. Afrishela’s second objective is to create communities of engagement to crowd in more capital through syndicates that can co-invest with the fund as well as be potential limited partners.
These objectives resonated with that of AFA, so a natural partnership emerged between GMT and CC in the spirit of the African maxim “if you want to go far, go together”, to curate two gender focused events as precursors to this year’s annual event.
On 25th March 2025, the first event “AFA@12 Launch” took place at ONESPACE in the Two Rivers International Finance and Innovation Center (TRIFIC) in Nairobi, Kenya bringing together a selected group of six founders to pitch to a room of forty-two investors and twelve ecosystem players under the theme “Mobilizing local capital to fuel Africa’s future”.[2]
On 19th June 2025, the second half day event “AFA@12 Roadshow” was hold at 22OnSloane in Johannesburg, South Africa bringing together another selected group of seven founders to pitch to a room of forty-five investors and fourteen ecosystem players under the theme “Catalytic Angel Capital for Inclusive Growth”.[3]
Kenya and South Africa were hosting AFA for the third time respectively, creating the perfect launchpad that has catapulted the event to its first destination outside the continent. On 19th September 2025, the twelve edition of the annual AFA (AFA@12) will be held in New York City (NYC), United States of America (USA) during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week.
Google who made a billion-dollar investment commitment to the continent during covid[4], will be hosting the event at their offices on 9th Avenue bringing together founders from the continent to meet investors to do deals in a cordial environment. Over the eleven years of the events existence, participation from investors in the US have grown multiple folds whiles engagement with the African diaspora in the US has become significant.
However, there are investors and potential investors in African ventures that have not made it to the continent yet, so this presents as opportunity for them to experience the event. Secondly, the event is growing into a global brand synonymous with Shark Tank from the US and Dragons Den from the UK even though the format is different.
Arc Angel Esther Dyson is the keynote for AFA@12, under the theme “Building and Investing in Africa”. Esther is a leading angel investor in the US, Europe and to some extent Africa and one of the pioneers of the New York angel investor community.
According to Esther, “for 25 years (1982-2007) I wrote (and mostly owned) an emerging info-tech industry newsletter called Release 1.0, watching the emergence of the PC, the venture capital industry, artificial intelligence and the Internet. As a journalist, I avoided conflicts of interest by not investing.
But because I had learned Russian as well as French, I started traveling to Russia in 1989 and started a second newsletter, Rel-EAST, about the East European tech scene. That was a labor of love, with no business model, free to anyone interested. But I realized that just as start-ups would talk to journalists, so would they talk to anyone remotely interested in investing – LOL. A subscriber and friend of mine – Lee Keet of Vanguard Atlantic – asked me: “You keep telling people to invest in Eastern Europe; why don’t you do so yourself? What if I gave you a million dollars?” “Oh, I can’t,” I replied. “I’m a journa….How much did you say?!” I ended up shutting down Rel-EAST and starting a small fund called EDventure Ventures, making five software investments in Eastern Europe.
“Through many transformations, my small share in our leading pick, Scala Business Software, has transformed into a $6-million-ish public stake in EPAM Solutions. That gave me a taste for the direct involvement and guidance that direct, early investing offers, and when I sold my company EDventure (including Release 1.0) to CNET in 2005 and left in 2007, I turned to investing in US and other startups.”
Esther has also accumulated her own small portfolio of African startups, including Angaza (Angaza.com, solar panels), Nomanini (Nomanini.com, a financial platform for small retailers), Ilara Health (IlaraHealth.com, formerly lending to health clinics and now also a franchiser), Oradian (Oradian.com, a cloud platform for small financial companies), Rasello (Rasello.com, formerly SMS marketing and now mostly health data collection and analysis), Swvl (Swvl.com, transit as a service), and Trella.app (logistics/trucking). Her keynote fireside chat would details some of these and her recent efforts like Wellville and Term Limits – a book that comes out in 2026.[5]
[1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/86865-angels-over-johannesburg.html?__cf_chl_tk=ef_OquCzHumIwx5IPAdxeOhkLW2f05g1.Ba1sfgIXJ8-1751939626-1.0.1.1-jlin6YjjD5KWhxyQ5SpWyjyePbeMYVY5OzO0j4Cv6L4
[2] https://gracamacheltrust.org/2025/04/14/mobilising-local-capital-to-fuel-africas-future/
[3] https://gracamacheltrust.org/2025/06/24/angel-investing-for-impact-why-africas-founders-need-local-capital-now/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLJvE5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETF4ZGU3YmxiMmsxeDJpUVFSAR4KWUpYRtzoUJiSMF9Z6kvc2BCdZlbqlvzxrXrQsFBvqzteOKcctvM0K-JVjg_aem_EjFiL3DBRcTfTJeVaajlvw
[4] https://www.connectingafrica.com/investment/google-pledges-1b-for-africa-s-digital-transformation
[5] https://africa.com/esther-dyson-to-keynote-12th-angel-fair-africa-at-google-nyc/
COVER PHOTO: Some of the participants at AFA@12 Roadshow in South Africa
