2017 Tutu Fellow Fayelle Ouane has joined Adenia Partners as an investment manager for their Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) fund. She remains a co-founder and board member at Suguba, the company she and 2019 Tutu Fellow Issam Chleuh started up together. Adenia is a private equity firm that specialises in private capital management, buyouts and investments.
Adenia is active in agribusiness, manufacturing financial services, IT and telecoms, hospitality and healthcare. It has offices in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar and its head office is based in Mauritius. It invests only in companies based in Africa.
Fayelle's other hat, Suguba, has a focus on West Africa and works with Francophone African startups, which have been neglected. It identified and worked with promising African entrepreneurs to prepare them to raise financing for rapid growth and expansion. The company helped start-ups to network with each other domestically and regionally to build winning partnerships. So going from working with entrepreneurs to SMEs was a logical transition. The Stanford and Harvard Business School graduate told AFLI that she was enjoying the work she was doing with Adenia, as Suguba hadn't done investments and she was gaining valuable additional experience in this area.
Adenia believes that building stronger companies is key to revitalizing economies, inspiring innovation, developing new business processes, and generating sustainable growth. It works closely with investees to create a culture of strong governance and social and environmental responsibility, making those values core to the company so as to outlive Adenia's investment. It has four funds; the first three are fully invested and the fourth was launched in 2016.
Report