# Jacana Partners Jacana Partners is an Asset Manager based in Accra, Ghana. ## Overview - **Organization type:** Asset Manager - **Headquarters:** Accra, Ghana - **Region:** Africa - **Address:** Accra, Ghana - **Founded:** 2008 - **Assets under management:** $50M – $200M (Altss estimate) - **Website:** jacana-partners.com ## Regulatory record - **Reports private funds:** No ## About Jacana Partners was founded in 2008 by Samir Abhyankar alongside a team of private equity and development-finance veterans who saw a gap between microfinance and large-scale infrastructure capital in Africa. The firm established its headquarters in Accra, Ghana, with additional offices in Nairobi and London, positioning itself to cover both Anglophone and Francophone West and East Africa. From the start, Jacana structured itself as a hybrid impact-investing firm, targeting the 'missing middle' of African enterprise — profitable businesses too small for traditional PE funds but too large for microfinance institutions. The firm invests across five core sectors: education, financial services, healthcare, agribusiness, and clean energy. Jacana typically writes equity and quasi-equity cheques between $500,000 and $5 million per company, holding positions for five to seven years. The portfolio spans multiple African markets, with confirmed investments in companies like Goodlife Pharmacy in Kenya, a pharmacy chain that grew from a single outlet to over 20 locations before exiting to LeapFrog Investments (per LeapFrog Investments, 2016); and Amethis Finance, a pan-African financial services group. The firm also backed Kayonza Irrigation, an agricultural infrastructure project in Uganda, and Moringa School, a Nairobi-based coding and data-science training provider. Jacana prefers minority stakes with active board seats, often structuring deals with technical-assistance grants alongside equity to strengthen investee operations. Jacana has raised three successive funds since its founding, deploying cumulative capital exceeding $100 million (per Jacana Partners, 2023). The firm's investor base blends European development-finance institutions — including CDC Group (now British International Investment) and FMO — with family offices and foundations seeking African exposure alongside impact. The London office serves primarily as a fundraising and investor-relations hub, while investment teams in Accra and Nairobi originate and manage deals. Jacana operates a dedicated technical-assistance facility called the Jacana Venture Lab, which provides pre- and post-investment support to portfolio companies on governance, financial management, and operational scaling. In 2022, the firm launched the Jacana Climate Resilience Fund, targeting climate-adaptation investments in agricultural value chains across Sub-Saharan Africa. Jacana's structural differentiator is its deliberate position at the intersection of private equity and development finance, a posture few Africa-focused managers sustain across multiple fund vintages. Unlike pure commercial PE firms that must return capital on three-to-five-year horizons, Jacana's blended-capital model allows it to hold positions longer and tolerate the operational volatility inherent in frontier-market SME investing. This patience — combined with in-house technical assistance — creates a portfolio construction model that looks more like structured venture-building than conventional fund management. ## Sectors - Education - Financial Services - Healthcare Services - AgriTech & FoodTech - Energy Transition & Renewables ## Offices - Nairobi, Kenya - London, United Kingdom ## People - Samir Abhyankar — Managing Partner & Co-Founder - Francis Kairu — Partner - Emmanuel de Sartiges — Senior Advisor ## Questions ### How does Jacana integrate technical assistance into its investment model? Jacana operates a dedicated technical-assistance vehicle called the Jacana Venture Lab, which provides pre- and post-investment support to portfolio companies in areas such as financial management, governance, and operational scaling. This capability is funded separately from the main investment pools, often via grants from development-finance partners. The model allows Jacana to take minority stakes in companies that require active operational hand-holding without eroding fund-level returns. ### Which investor types back Jacana Partners' funds? Jacana's limited partners are a mix of European development-finance institutions — including British International Investment (formerly CDC Group) and FMO — alongside family offices and foundations seeking African SME exposure. The firm does not publicly market to retail investors or US public pension funds, keeping its fundraising concentrated within the European impact-investing ecosystem and select African institutional pools. ### What is Jacana's geographic footprint within Africa? Jacana operates from investment hubs in Accra, Ghana and Nairobi, Kenya, covering both West and East Africa. The firm's historic deal flow spans Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Côte d'Ivoire, with occasional investments in francophone West Africa. The London office serves a pure fundraising and investor-relations function and does not originate deals. ### How does the Jacana Climate Resilience Fund differ from the firm's earlier vehicles? Launched in 2022, the Jacana Climate Resilience Fund invests specifically in climate-adaptation agricultural value chains, targeting smallholder-farmer aggregators, cold-storage logistics, and irrigation infrastructure. Unlike the generalist earlier funds, this vehicle has a thematic mandate tied to climate resilience and is designed to attract climate-focused concessional capital alongside standard equity commitments. ### How is Jacana Partners compensated, and does it charge carried interest on development-finance returns? Jacana operates a standard private-equity fee structure with management fees and carried interest, though the blended-capital nature of its funds means some technical-assistance components are grant-funded and fee-exempt. Specific carry terms are not publicly disclosed, but the firm has structured its vehicles to satisfy both commercial return requirements for DFI LPs and impact thresholds required by concessional capital providers. ## Related profiles - [Cofiri Invest](https://altss.com/profile/cofiri-invest) --- Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/jacana-partners Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology