AHL Venture Partners Recognised at the EAVCA Industry Awards
02 April 2026
AHL Venture Partners (AHL) was honoured to receive the Exit of the Year Award at the just ended EAVCA Industry Awards 2025 for its investment in M-KOPA.
The recognition reflects both the strength of a long-term partnership and the continued development of East Africa’s private capital ecosystem.
The award was presented during the EAVCA Industry Awards and Gala Dinner, an important annual convening of investors, founders, development partners, and ecosystem stakeholders working across the region.
AHL Venture Partners Portfolio & Investment Team
Events like this provide an opportunity to step back from day-to-day activity and reflect on the shared progress being made to support scalable African businesses.
A long-term partnership supporting growth and scale
Through the Adolf H. Lundin Charitable Foundation (AHLCF), AHL supported M-KOPA from its early stages, partnering with the company as it evolved from an off-grid solar financing provider in Kenya into a leading digitally enabled consumer financing platform serving millions of customers across multiple African markets. What started as a relatively small initial investment in 2012, grew into ~12 different strategic follow-on investments of both debt and equity, directly from AHLCF, and syndicated from investors in our network.
Beyond capital, AHLCF supported M-KOPA through capital continuity, governance participation, technical assistance, and mobilisation of third-party funding aligned with the company’s evolving needs.
This included supporting access to additional financing through syndicated debt facilities, commissioning market research through the fund’s technical assistance programme, and supporting leadership development through executive training partnerships.
In 2025, AHLCF completed a partial secondary exit as part of M-KOPA’s Series F financing round. The transaction generated realised cash proceeds while allowing the fund to retain a meaningful stake in the company’s continued growth journey. Our history with MKOPA reflects AHL’s approach to supporting companies across their development lifecycle while selectively realising value as businesses reach institutional scale.
Liquidity events remain relatively limited across many African private capital markets. Against this backdrop, the transaction represents an important example of how patient capital can translate into realised outcomes. It also highlights the ability of African companies to attract large-scale institutional capital and progress through a full investment cycle from initial backing to value realisation and reinvestment.
