Niklas Adalberth’s Norrsken Foundation is in the news again barely two months after opening its Norrsken House in Kigali, Rwanda, which plans to accommodate thousands of entrepreneurs by next year.
This time, the foundation has teamed up with thirty unicorn founders and a couple of seasoned venture capital and private equity investors to launch a $200 million fund targeted at African startups.
The fund, dubbed the Norrsken22 African Tech Growth Fund, has reached its first close of $110 million, per a statement seen by TechCrunch. It’s the latest fund launched by Norrsken after closing €125 million impact fund for European startups last March.
Hans Otterling, a partner at Northzone, a U.K.-based early VC firm that led the investment in Adalberth’s previous company Klarna, is Norrsken’s founding partner alongside the Klarna co-founder.
Making up the firm’s investment are the general partners Natalie Kolbe, the ex-global head of private equity at Actis, a private equity fund investing in emerging markets; her colleague, Ngetha Waithaka; and Lexi Novitske, the ex-managing partner at Acuity Ventures Platform. Novitske told TechCrunch on a call that the firm is speaking to a few DFIs to reach a final close later this year.
Before Acuity, Novitske was principal at Singularity Investments. Portfolio companies across both firms include API fintechs such as Mono and OnePipe; and exited companies like Flutterwave, Paystack and Pharma.
