Launch Africa Ventures has been appointed investment advisor to the Botswana Tech Fund (BTF), a newly established multi-stage venture capital vehicle targeting technology and technology-enabled businesses across Southern Africa, with a total target size of £50 million.
The appointment, announced on 21 April 2026, places the Cape Town-based firm — which has deployed $65 million across more than 170 startups since its founding in 2020 — in an advisory capacity over a third-party mandate, a model the firm refers to internally as its “managed accounts” strategy.
Phase One of the BTF will deploy up to £5 million: £1 million across a pre-seed cohort and between two and four growth-stage investments through both primary and secondary opportunities. The remaining capital is earmarked for subsequent phases as the fund scales.
Who is behind it
The fund is anchored by Pula Investments, the family office of Stephen Lansdown CBE, co-founder of the UK wealth management platform Hargreaves Lansdown, which today manages over £150 billion in client assets.
Managing the fund is Martin Davis, former chief executive of FTSE 250-listed Molten Ventures, where he oversaw portfolio growth to approximately £2 billion in net asset value before stepping down in 2023. Davis’s appointment signals institutional pedigree — Molten is one of the UK’s largest listed venture capital vehicles — and his involvement lends the BTF credibility with European limited partners who may be watching Southern Africa more closely than their allocation sheets suggest.
Alongside Davis is Florence Bavanandan, named as General Partner of the BTF. Bavanandan currently serves as Head of Platform and Operations at Launch Africa Ventures, where she has managed infrastructure across the firm’s 170-company portfolio. The dual role — maintaining her position at Launch Africa while serving as GP at BTF — reflects the structural logic of the managed accounts model, where Launch Africa’s operational apparatus is essentially extended to the new vehicle.
Zachariah George, co-founder and managing partner of Launch Africa, framed the rationale plainly: “The founders building in Southern Africa’s frontier markets are operating in one of the most underleveraged digitisation opportunities on the continent. They have been doing it largely without institutional backing.”
The Southern Africa thesis
The geographic rationale is specific. Botswana’s internet penetration stands at approximately 80%, placing it among the highest rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country ranks in the top five of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, maintains an investment-grade sovereign credit profile by regional standards, and sits within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc — a 16-nation market covering more than 370 million people.
For early-stage investors, this context matters less as a macro story and more as a deal sourcing and exit argument. A startup incorporating in or expanding to Botswana gains regulatory legibility across SADC, proximity to South Africa’s more developed capital markets, and access to a government that has, in recent years, positioned innovation as central to its post-diamond diversification agenda.
That last point is institutionalised through the BTF’s formal partnership with the Botswana Innovation Hub, a government-backed facility in Gaborone. Portfolio companies will receive physical office space there, access to the hub’s deal flow networks, and integration into the national innovation system — an arrangement that gives the fund a ground-level operational presence without requiring the fund manager to establish a standalone local office.
The Southern Africa region has historically sat in the shadow of West Africa, and Nairobi in East Africa, when it comes to venture capital attention. According to Partech Africa’s 2024 annual report, South Africa attracted the lion’s share of Southern African funding rounds, while countries like Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique collectively accounted for a fraction of disclosed deals. The BTF is explicitly targeting that gap — not just in Botswana, but in the broader regional economy.
How the fund invests
BTF operates a dual-track investment strategy intended to engage founders across stages.
The accelerator programme targets pre-seed companies based in Southern Africa, writing cheques of between £25,000 and £100,000 per cohort company. Alongside capital, the programme offers structured operational support and market access — a format that mirrors what Launch Africa has deployed across its existing portfolio, albeit adapted for the region.
The growth strategy targets revenue-generating companies at seed through Series C stage, deploying between £500,000 and £2 million per investment in primary and secondary opportunities. Secondary investments — the purchase of existing shares from earlier investors or founders — allow the fund to enter established companies without requiring new capital raises, a mechanism that has grown in relevance across African markets where liquidity events remain infrequent and early backers often need early exits.
Founders at the growth stage gain access to Launch Africa’s continental network, including co-investors, potential customers, and operational expertise across the firm’s 25-country footprint.
The dual structure reflects a tension that many Africa-focused funds have tried to resolve: how to back founders early enough to generate meaningful returns, while also deploying capital at a scale that moves the needle for limited partners. By combining a small accelerator with a larger growth portfolio under one vehicle, the BTF creates optionality — the accelerator generates early-stage deal flow that could convert into follow-on investments through the growth programme.
The BTF appointment is the latest signal of Launch Africa’s pivot toward fund management services beyond its own balance sheet. The managed accounts model — where the firm advises on, and operationally supports, capital raised by third parties — has precedent across more mature venture markets but remains relatively uncommon in Africa, where most VC firms still operate single-fund structures.
Launch Africa has deployed $65 million across its two funds since 2020, backing startups across sectors including fintech, healthtech, logistics, and enterprise software. The firm claims $3 billion in aggregate market capitalisation across its portfolio, though that figure is not independently audited and is calculated using post-money valuations at the time of the most recent funding rounds — a standard but imprecise metric for portfolios that include many illiquid, private companies.
The BTF mandate extends Launch Africa’s footprint into Southern Africa more formally, at a moment when competition for deal flow from West Africa and East Africa is intensifying. If the thesis holds — that Botswana and surrounding markets are undercapitalised relative to their economic fundamentals — early positioning could yield a sourcing advantage that later entrants would struggle to replicate.
What to watch
The BTF’s Phase One is deliberately modest in scale. At £5 million, it is closer to a proof-of-concept deployment than a serious allocation by the standards of institutional investors. The real question is whether Phase One generates the performance data — and the LP relationships — needed to raise the remaining £45 million into subsequent phases.
Stephen Lansdown’s involvement as anchor investor is meaningful but not sufficient. Family office capital, while patient, is not a substitute for institutional LP commitments from pension funds, development finance institutions, or fund-of-funds — the kind of capital that would enable BTF to write the larger cheques required for Series B and Series C deals.
The fund is domiciled in Guernsey, a common choice for Africa-focused vehicles seeking a neutral, tax-efficient jurisdiction with English-law protections. That structure should simplify LP onboarding for UK and European investors, but it also reflects the ongoing challenge that most African VC funds face: a shortage of domestic institutional capital, which forces managers to look abroad for the money they need to invest locally.
Whether the BTF can close that loop — raising European capital to back African founders building in markets that remain opaque to most foreign investors — is ultimately the test that matters. Phase One buys time to find out.
The Botswana Tech Fund is domiciled in Guernsey. Launch Africa Ventures is headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa.