OCA Impact Report 2023

Dear Friends and Partners,

Dear Partners & Friends, We’re already well into an exciting 2024 with plans to increase our team across all offices, work with hundreds of clients across Africa and around the world, and advance our theories of change in each of our Practice Areas, especially in what feels most urgent, like climate action and gender smart approaches.

Each year, we find it helpful to pause and reflect on our progress, taking learnings from our clients, our markets, and our eco-system.

2023 was similarly challenging to 2022, especially for clients in countries like Kenya and Nigeria, which experienced some of the world’s most significant currency depreciations, and countries in West Africa like Niger & Burkina Faso, which suffered coup d’etats. We also saw a significant reduction in total capital deployed on the continent, for example a 22% reduction in venture capital in 2023 compared to 2022. However, even in tough markets, there are bright spots -- we successfully supported >300 clients including key companies, investors, development players, and local governments. In terms of capital, closed $350M of transactions, with a wide range from $200k - $130M, reflecting our focus to support both the continent’s industry leaders and high-growth small African businesses.

We remain excited about the work we do directly with African SMEs – in 2023, we helped >200 to strengthen and scale their businesses, resulting in thousands of new jobs and new levels of scale for promising technologies in clean energy, agri-tech, fintech, clean cooking, and more.

In this report, we’ve included some of the client stories that keep us so excited by the work we do – helping urban refugees access capital, replacing petrol with electric motorcycles, improving Zambia’s seed sector, enabling plastic recycling in Senegal, and much more.

We are as focused as ever on creating a long-term, resilient & sustainable firm that can continue our impact on Africa for decades to come. We’re continuing our hiring at all levels - if you or someone you recommend might be interested in joining us, please take a look at our open opportunities – we highly value your recommendations & referrals. We look forward to connecting and working together; reach out – let’s talk!

Read the full impact report here

All our best,

Annie & Andreas