Botswana Tech Fund raises £5M first close, anchored by Lansdown family office
What's the deal? The Botswana Tech Fund (BTF) has reached a first close of £5m ($6.7m) to back early-stage technology companies in Southern Africa. The commitment is anchored by Pula InvestmentsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the family office of British billionaire Stephen Lansdown, co-founder of wealth manager Hargreaves LansdownDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Guernsey-domiciled BTF is targeting a total size of £50m.
Who's running it? The fund is led by two general partners: Martin Davis, former chief executive of FTSE 250-listed Molten Ventures, and Florence Bavanandan, head of platform and operations at Launch Africa. Cape Town-based Launch Africa VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which has backed more than 170 startups since 2020, is investment adviser and will run BTF as a managed account.
What's the endgame? BTF will pursue a dual-track strategy across Botswana and neighbouring markets. An accelerator will write cheques of £25,000 to £100,000 for pre-seed companies, while a growth tranche invests £500,000 to £2m in revenue-generating businesses from seed to Series C. Phase one deploys the initial £5m: £1m across the accelerator cohort and the rest into two to four growth deals.
Why now? The fund is targeting a gap. Botswana ranks near the top of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, carries an investment-grade sovereign profile, and has internet penetration of around 80%, among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. BTF has also partnered with the state-backed Botswana Innovation Hub in Gaborone.
In their words: "The founders building in Southern Africa's frontier markets are operating in one of the most underleveraged digitisation opportunities on the continent," said Launch Africa co-founder Zachariah George. "They have been doing it largely without institutional backing."
What could go wrong? A £5m first close is modest against the £50m target, and the fund describes phase one as a proof-of-concept deployment. Southern Africa remains a minnow in African venture capital: South Africa took the bulk of regional funding last year, while Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique together accounted for a negligible share of disclosed deals.
The signal: BTF is a bet that institutional capital and governance credibility — via Davis's Molten pedigree and Lansdown's backing — can crowd others into an overlooked frontier market. Turning that anchor into a broader book from development finance institutions, pension funds, or funds-of-funds will decide whether it scales into larger, later-stage cheques.
Read more: launchbaseafrica.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
