Al Mada Ventures

Al Mada Ventures is a $110 million pan-African venture fund launched in 2022 by Al Mada Group, one of Africa's largest holding companies controlled by the Moroccan royal family. The fund is led by Managing Director Omar Laalej and invests across seed through Series B, with cheque sizes ranging from $500K at seed to $6M at Series A/B and follow-on capacity up to $10M per company.

What makes Al Mada Ventures distinctive is that the capital is 100% African-sourced, which is rare in a landscape where most Africa-focused VC firms raise from European or American LPs. The fund's tagline, "for Africans, by Africans," reflects a deliberate strategy to build an investment vehicle backed entirely by African institutional and corporate capital. This also means the team has deep relationships with major African corporates through the Al Mada Group's subsidiaries across insurance, retail, mining, energy, and telecommunications, and portfolio companies get direct access to those networks for distribution, partnerships, and commercial pilots.

The portfolio already spans multiple geographies and sectors, with investments in companies like Money Fellows (Egypt, consumer fintech), Gozem (Togo, super-app for mobility), YoLa Fresh (Morocco, fresh produce supply chain), Deepecho (Morocco, AI prenatal care), Susu (Ivory Coast, health insurance), Checker (digital assets infrastructure), Sowit (Morocco, satellite agriculture), and WafR (Morocco, retail tech). The fund operates across 27 markets, with strongest coverage in North Africa and Francophone West and Central Africa, and is actively expanding into East and Southern Africa.