Two Nairobi Funds Are Merging to Chase Bigger Infrastructure Bets

Rift Valley Ventures and Kilele Capital announced on Sunday that they will combine, folding two funds of roughly $95 million and $70 million into a single platform with about $180 million under management after a small top-up from existing limited partners.

The stated rationale is check size. Both firms have spent the last two years watching infrastructure-adjacent deals — mini-grids, cold chain, fiber, battery swap — move past what a $95 million fund can lead without dangerous concentration. Neither wanted to keep taking minority positions in deals they had sourced.

"We were bidding against each other for the same seven companies with the same eight-million-dollar ceiling," said Kilele managing partner David Otieno. "One of us would win, take a position too small to matter, and then call the other one for the follow-on anyway. At some point you notice you have already merged and are just doing the paperwork inefficiently."

Fund mergers are rare and awkward — carry structures, vintage-year accounting, and two sets of partners who have to agree on who runs the investment committee. The combined firm says all six partners are staying, which is the sort of thing that is true at announcement. If it holds, it points toward consolidation across a continental fund landscape that has more managers than it has capital.