Akili

Akili is long Africa, permanent capital

We build, buy, and invest for the African century

Who we are

Akili is a long Africa permanent capital vehicle for investing and re‑investing on the continent

We are neither a VC or venture studio, we are a flexible operating company that invests, builds, co-creates, acquires, and scales new ventures. We’re growing a diversified portfolio of high growth African companies and products that reinforce each other’s value.

Akili offers a unique ability to invest broadly in Africa’s future

For our investors and partners, Akili offers a unique ability to invest broadly in Africa's future, help propel its growth, solve critically important problems of the 21st century, work with great African entrepreneurs, and build generation defining value.

Akili does not invest passively, nor look at businesses in isolation

We actively support and sometimes help operate our portfolio. We finance and build connective tissue between and adjacent to our portfolio companies. And we actively leverage the assets and networks across our portfolio to give our ventures an unfair advantage.

Akili is focused on long term compounding growth

In Africa and for Africa.

Why Africa

  • In the next thirty years, 25% of the global population will reside in Africa. By the end of the century, 40%.

    Africa is the fastest growing continent measured by both population and GDP, with growth rates across the continent outpacing most of the world, even in a global downturn. Given this trajectory, this century, as Africa goes, so goes the world.

  • The most important problems, and biggest opportunities, of the 21st century are in Africa.

    To meet them, the continent's entrepreneurs and creatives will make themselves heard. Akili exists to identify, support, and build alongside them.

  • We believe in an African century, where the continent must play a leading role in humanity's growth and survival. We’re doing everything we can to make it happen.

How we do it

We are long Africa

Akili is structured to create long term compounding growth in Africa through a diversified portfolio of interconnected cash flow generating businesses and assets.

We work with capital partners

Akili has significant capital flexibility, working with investors of all kinds at many levels of portfolio and deal exposure and sharing economics.

We operate platforms that buy, build, and invest

Akili builds portfolios through investment platforms in areas like climate, health, the future of work, media, commerce, and the diaspora.

We ecosystem build

Akili does not invest passively. We look for adjacent opportunities to build services and infrastructure that support our portfolio and increase our value add.

Investment platforms

Akili operates a set of investment platforms that work across markets and sectors, and build ecosystems of portfolio companies and supportive infrastructure and services

Climate

The two most predictable trends of the 21st century are global demographics and climate change. Africa is not responsible for the majority of emissions, but its populations will suffer the consequences more than anyone. Across energy, agriculture, and carbon, Akili is building out the continent’s climate ecosystem including electric vehicles and financing, charging and energy infrastructure, large scale forestry and regenerative agricultural projects, and sustainable food systems and supply chains.

Media

As consumers of media, content, and advertising, African populations will only grow in importance with the growth of the middle class and disposable income across the continent. With some of the top actors, musicians, and athletes increasingly African, the significance of African culture and talent is only getting stronger. Akili Media seeks to build large scale audiences, acquiring and investing in media assets, native content production, talent representation, ecosystems like live music, and physical infrastructure. With a close connection to Commerce, Akili Media provides opportunities for reach to Akili’s portfolio and our partners.

Commerce

Commerce, covering trade, transaction, and financial services, is growing rapidly in Africa alongside the continent’s demographic explosion, particularly its 170M strong middle class. Commerce is not only a good investment, it allows Akili to build and access large networks of customers. With Akili Media consolidating large scale audiences, Commerce seeks to create a set of tools and playbooks for African merchants and brands that we back to connect with those audiences.

Health

The future belongs to Africa, but without significant improvements in health infrastructure, services, and outcomes, that future will not be bright. Treatable infectious diseases claim millions of lives each year, while preventable non communicable illnesses are growing with the middle class. Health systems are plagued by crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure, scarcity of essential medicines and a lack of trained health workers. There is a huge gap not just in funding, but infrastructure, resources, and expertise, in healthcare across the continent. As a team, Akili has more experience in healthcare than anything else, and we’re aiming to make significant investments in health and show what an ecosystem building approach can accomplish.

Future of Work

African youth are the most important demographic on Earth. With the world’s plummeting populations, the future looks African, and its youth are poised to be the consumers, producers, savers, taxpayers, caretakers, entrepreneurs and leaders of the near future. As technology rapidly reshapes work and productivity again and again, leaving our educational systems ineffective and ultimately obsolete, there is no population more important to educate in modern evidenced based approaches that build skills than African youth.

The Diaspora

With the compounding of African demographics while the rest of the world experiences collapsing birth rates and populations, the significance of the diaspora will continue to grow over the 21st century. The diaspora provides a critical source of funding and support to their families back home, and are increasingly important in bridging the export of African brands and culture tthe world, and importing useful advances in the world to Africa.

Akili Primitives

Not all Akili theses revolve around sectors. Primitives are patterns, typically software, product, business or operational model based, that can be reused and/or recreated in other contexts than the ones where they are found originally. When we see promising patterns like these, the Akili prototyping team builds them out to test them in new environments, and make them available to our portfolio, partners, and often, anyone. We’re exploring and building a variety of primitives, particularly around offline, payments, and arbitrage.

Our values

  • 1.
    We bring Africa to the world, and the world to Africa
  • 2.
    We are long term investors and permanent re‑investors in the African growth story
  • 3.
    Everything we do contributes to African economic, entrepreneurial, and intellectual growth
  • 4.
    We will not contribute to human suffering
  • 5.
    We embrace the new ways of doing business in Africa: transparency, integrity, long‑term commitment

Our portfolio

Team

  • Kunle Apampa Venture Partner
  • Kofi Owusu Bempah Partner, Akili Climate
  • Magda Byczewska Designer
  • Adam Hoscilo Head of Product
  • Kamuti Kiteme Venture Partner
  • Kyalo Kitili Software Developer
  • Amit Lubling Managing Partner
  • Vincent Mbaya Creative Director, Akili Studios
  • Mwiya Musokotwane President, General Partner
  • Kevin Mutiso Partner, Akili Commerce
  • Vincent Onyando Entrepreneur in residence
  • James Otoa Venture partner
  • Liz Salcedo Head of Operations
  • Isaiah Smallman Partner, Akili Media
  • Nate Taylor Venture Architect
  • Towela Wightman Research Analyst
  • Dustyn Winder Managing Partner, CIO

Contact us

Investors

We work with investors of all kinds, including family offices, foundations, LPs, VCs, HNWIs, DFIs and more. If you are interested in Africa and our approach and investment platforms, please reach out.

Founders

Akili is fueled by African founders building businesses across the continent. If you are a founder looking for a partner, rather than a passive investor, someone who can help you build and scale your business, we want to hear from you.

Partners

As a diversified holding company, Akili’s success is based on working with great partners. If your organization could be a good partner for Akili, we’d love to explore opportunities together.

Others

Just want to say hi? Please do. We welcome anyone interested in Akili to reach out.

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