Adenia Entrepreneurial Fund

Equity : January 2026

BIO has invested USD 15 M in equity in Adenia Entrepreneurial Fund II, a sector-agnostic SME fund focused on founder/family-led companies across Africa.

Amount

$ 15,000,000.00

Type of investment

Equity

Development impacts

Local economic growth
Private sector consolidation/innovation
Fight against climate change

Beneficiary locations

Africa:

Investment field

Investment Companies & Funds

Activity

SME Fund

Organisation

Adenia Entrepreneurial Fund

Adenia Entrepreneurial Fund (I) LP is a 10-year sector-agnostic SME fund with a target size of USD 150 M that is focusing on founder/family-led companies across Africa. The fund will acquire controlling stakes in established small to medium size companies across a variety of sectors with EBITDA ranging between USD 2 and 5 M, with the intention to transform them into sustainable regional leaders.

With this 6th Private Equity fund, Adenia Partners Ltd will continue to build on its disciplined investment strategy that consists in investing in fundamentally strong companies where the fund manager can nonetheless identify significant room for value creation, and at reasonable entry price points.

By launching AEF, Adenia returns to its roots of SME investing and is becoming for the first time a multi-strategy platform. Indeed, this new small- to lower-mid cap franchise will perfectly complement what has now become its mid-cap strategy as the “Adenia Capital (AC)” funds have now reached a new level with the successful fundraising of Adenia Capital V (USD 470 M). Adenia was founded in 2002 and is a trusted business partner of BIO since 2012.

The firm has raised USD 880 M across 5 funds and completed 34 investments to date. At the time of our investment, the company had gathered a solid team of 36 professionals (of which 19 investment professionals) spread across 8 locations in Africa (5 local offices and 3 representative offices). BIO already invested in Adenia Capital III and IV.

Development impacts

Local economic growth
Access to long term capital - Investing USD 7-20 M (with “sweet spot” between USD 10 and 15 M) into 8-10 companies across various countries (mainly in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco and South Africa) and real-economy sectors (incl. manufacturing, B2B and financial services, food processing, retail, etc) in Africa, mostly medium-sized companies (not an explicit objective but a majority of current pipeline aligned with BIO’s SME definition) that the fund ambitions to transform into local or regional champions.
Private sector consolidation/innovation
Further supporting Adenia that is one the most established and reliable SME fund manager with 20-year investment experience in Africa. Adenia has a proven track record in acting as an “agent of change", leveraging on its controlling strategy to profoundly transform and institutionalize its portfolio companies.
Fight against climate change
Overall fund manager commitment to carbon neutrality by 2027 and to reducing CO2 emissions intensity of all portfolio companies, while reporting on climate actions according to TCFD and IFRS standards.

E&S Impact

Adenia has a well-developed ESMS in place, ensuring environmental and social due diligence processes that comply with EDFI standards. The ESMS offers several tools to facilitate and standardize ESDD processes. Adenia has dedicated E&S teams working on all funds managed by Adenia. Adenia has an exclusion list that meets EDFI standards.

Environmental and Social (E&S) classification of the project: B+