Botswana Tech Fund and Launch Africa eyes Southern Africa

Botswana Tech Fund has partnered with Launch Africa in a $64 million venture fund vehicle targeting undervalued markets in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe.

The fund, backed by British billionaire Stephen Lansdown with the fund’s co-founder Martin Davis and Launch Africa’s co-lead Florence Bavanandan designed a multi-stage strategy focusing on fintech, agritech, mobility, and digital infrastructure across Southern Africa.

The fund will operate a three-legged investment strategy designed to bridge what he described as the region’s “digital gap.”

The vehicle will deploy approximately $6.4 million in its initial phase, including $1.3 million reserved for pre-seed founders, whileb100 Southern African companies will receive pre-seed cheques of up to $135,000 over five years.

A growth programme will allocate between $670,000 and $2.7 million for revenue-generating companies from Seed to Series C stages and the fund will also pursue secondary transactions, buying out early-stage venture capitalists from established companies in larger African markets.

Prospective companies will undergo a three-stage screening process: an initial application form, an artificial intelligence-based filter, and a deal screening committee review.

When asked about geographical priorities, Davis and Bavanandan said they are targeting Southern African markets that receive less than a fifth of the continent’s total venture funding.

1. “We are providing capital to allow talented entrepreneurs and engineers in those markets to build capabilities at home, to help digitalize the economy and close the digital gap,” they said.

For Zimbabwe, the fund offers potential relief for a startup ecosystem starved of patient equity capital. Local entrepreneurs face prohibitive borrowing costs, foreign currency shortages, and collateral requirements that exclude most small businesses from traditional bank lending.

The pre-seed cheques of up to $135,000 are particularly significant for Zimbabwean tech startups, which typically operate at the intersection of high inflation and low institutional support.

The fund’s agritech focus could support solutions to post-harvest losses, a perennial challenge for Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector.