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The Botswana Tech Fund (BTF) has launched as a $67.5 million (£50 million) multi-stage venture capital fund to back technology and tech-enabled businesses across Southern Africa. The first close of the fund is expected in Q2 2026, and phase one will see the deployment of up to $6.76 million (£5 million), with $1.35 million (£1 million) allocated to a pre-seed cohort and two to four growth-stage investments in primary and secondary opportunities.
The fund is anchored by Pula Investments, the family office of Stephen Lansdown CBE, founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, and powered by Launch Africa Ventures, the pan-African VC firm focused on early-stage African startups. The fund targets what its backers describe as one of the continent’s most chronically underinvested digitisation opportunities: application layer and infrastructure rails. Even though internet infrastructure has matured, scalable, venture-backed capital remains scarce, and BTF wants to close that gap.
“Southern Africa is at a digital inflection point,” said Martin Davis, Managing Partner of the Botswana Tech Fund. “Digital infrastructure has matured, but scalable application-layer solutions remain dramatically under-served. We see a generational opportunity to back the founders building the digital economy of tomorrow, before valuations and competition reset upward.“
BTF will operate as a dual investment strategy. Its accelerator programme will back pre-Seed companies based in Southern Africa with $33,799 (£25,000) to $135,197 (£100,000) in capital per cohort company, alongside structured support, market access, and hands-on operational guidance. The growth strategy, meanwhile, targets revenue-generating businesses from Seed through Series C, deploying $675,987 (£500,000) to $2.7 million (£2 million) per investment and giving founders access to Launch Africa’s continental network spanning 25 countries.
Launch Africa Ventures has been appointed as the investment advisor to the fund, bringing significant experience to the partnership. Founded in 2020, the firm has screened over 8,000 deals, deployed $65 million across 170-plus ventures, supported more than 300 founders, and generated over $3 billion in market capitalisation across its two funds.
“The founders building in Southern Africa’s frontier markets are operating in one of the most underleveraged digitisation opportunities on the continent,” said Zachariah George, co-founder and Managing Partner of Launch Africa Ventures. “They have been doing it largely without institutional backing — this is a fantastic opportunity for founders at every stage of their journey and will be truly catalytic for the ecosystem.“
The fund is led by Davis, former CEO of FTSE 250-listed Molten Ventures, where he grew the portfolio to $2.7 billion (£2 billion) in net asset value and backed companies including Revolut, Trustpilot, and UiPath. He is joined by General Partner Florence Bavanandan, Head of Platform and Operations at Launch Africa Ventures, who oversees infrastructure across the firm’s portfolio companies.
Why Botswana? BTF has a good reason behind this choice. The country ranks in the top five on the Ibrahim Index of African governance, boasts 80% internet penetration, and sits at the centre of the SADC block, a 16-nation market of over 370 million people. The fund has also secured a strategic partnership with the Botswana Innovation Hub to give its portfolio companies a physical base, proprietary deal flow, and connection to the country’s wider innovation ecosystem.
Additionally, the fund has committed a portion of investment returns to the Tuli Conservation Trust, a Botswana-based non-profit focused on anti-poaching and community development, signalling an intent to deliver long-term impact in the region.
