FMO has entered a three-year partnership with the Africa Early-Stage Investor Summit (AESIS), one of Africa's leading platforms for early-stage investors. The partnership aims to strengthen the networks, knowledge and market conditions that help capital reach innovative African businesses.
Strong investment ecosystems are essential for entrepreneurship and private sector growth. Yet many early-stage investors continue to face challenges such as fragmented markets, limited opportunities to share knowledge, and unclear pathways for exits and capital recycling. Through FMO's support, AESIS will expand its role to become a more consistent platform for ecosystem coordination, investor engagement and market creation.
“At FMO, we see Africa’s early-stage investment ecosystem as a critical foundation for long-term private sector development. Our partnership with AESIS reflects a shared ambition to move beyond one-off convening and support a more coordinated, institutionally grounded platform for investor learning, collaboration and capital mobilization. By strengthening dialogue across LPs, GPs, DFIs and ecosystem actors, we aim to help build the conditions for more resilient capital flows into African entrepreneurship,” said Marieke Roestenberg, Manager, FMO Ventures.
Co-created by ABAN and VC4A, AESIS has been convening the continent's leading early-stage investors since 2013 and has grown into Africa's premier platform for investor learning, collaboration, and capital mobilization.
“This partnership allows us to think beyond a single annual event. Together with FMO, we’re creating a long-term platform for investor learning, collaboration and market development. By strengthening dialogue around frontier markets, venture debt, governance and exits, we can help build a more connected and resilient investment ecosystem across Africa,” said Yaw Peprah, AESIS Director.
The partnership will support structured investor engagement, year-round learning and practical dialogue on the market barriers that continue to limit capital formation, including fragmentation among capital providers, misalignment between LPs and GPs, limited transparency on exits and liquidity pathways, and weak capital recycling dynamics.
Key areas of focus include:
Strengthen AESIS as a credible, neutral and Africa-focused coordination platform where LPs, GPs, DFIs, angel investors, venture funds and ecosystem actors can engage in more candid, practice-oriented dialogue on how early-stage capital is deployed, governed and recycled.
Deepen structured LP-only, LP–GP and cross-capital-stack engagement to improve alignment on governance, reporting discipline, risk-return expectations, portfolio management, exits, liquidity and capital mobilization.
Introduce a more consistent year-round engagement rhythm through AESIS Talks, investor meetups, webinars, masterclasses, thematic roundtables, LP–GP office hours and curated partner sessions that reinforce learning beyond the annual summit.
Elevate frontier and under-served markets as part of the core investor conversation, with a focus on practical ecosystem-building approaches that support stronger intermediaries, local capital mobilization and more investable early-stage pipelines.
Generate and share practical learning outputs, including session summaries, investor learning memos, diagnostics, benchmarking insights and other knowledge products that translate convening discussions into actionable market intelligence.
Support long-term ecosystem development by strengthening coordination, institutional quality, transparency and investor confidence across the full early-stage capital lifecycle: angel, seed, growth, exit and recycling.
