About
Many throughout the world have distorted and stereotypical perceptions of the African continent and its people. Our mission is to challenge these misperceptions by revealing Africa's boundless entrepreneurial spirit.
We are an investment platform dedicated to supporting Africa's next generation of technology entrepreneurs who are building tech-enabled businesses that are transforming African markets, solving the continent's most pertinent issues, and most importantly shifting the global perception of Africa and the Black identity.
We enjoy partnering with values-driven leaders who are committed to this generational mission. And when we find them, we encourage them to join our community of dreamers, founders, technologists, and leaders—our Kinfolk.
We predominantly focus our investing efforts at the seed stage—the early formative months and years of a business when crucial first decisions can have an exponential influence on future outcomes. This way our capital, networks, accumulated expertise related to strategy, design and technology, can have the most impact.
We partner early, sometimes when a business is no more than an idea, but only when we have firm and authentic conviction in the team, the business, and the underlying vision.
Our ideal investment opportunities more than likely provide a highly scalable tech-based product or service that has a clear, addressable market in Africa first, and eventually globally.
We invest in a limited number of high quality teams and businesses (between five to ten each year) that we intend to partner with for the long term.
Building iconic African businesses and driving transformational change takes time. We're not in it for the quick flip.
While we're sometimes called investors, that is not our only frame of mind.
We are venture capitalists dedicated to making capitalism work for everyone. Kinfolk fundamentally believes that our investment efforts can help build a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economic system for the African continent.
Profit and purpose are not mutually exclusive, but it's part of our job as ecosystem builders to convey specific success stories and relay those to mainstream investors and stakeholders.
As a result, Kinfolk integrates ESG frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mandates such as the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and reporting standards from the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) throughout our operations and investment process. As part of our initial investment screen we identify investment opportunities and business models that have significant potential to advance the UN SDGs. Post initial investment we work closely with our partner businesses to measure, analyze and report on industry-specific key performance indicators based on the sustainability accounting standards and guidelines provided by SASB.
In doing so, we work to better align our Kinfolk leaders with the broader objectives of sustainable development and promote a more inclusive form of capitalism within the African communities where we live and work.
The history of capitalism across Africa has not always been pleasant. Working within this historical context not only brings intense meaning to what we do, it gives us a heightened awareness of our responsibility.