Central Africa SME Fund

completed

The IFC Board approved the IFC Ventures proposal on Thursday, May 29, 2008 (IFC/R2008-0114). The program reaches frontier markets –post-conflict countries- and creates a new asset class –SME private equity (“PE”) funds that use risk capital and business support services to remove obstacles from the portfolio companies’ growth path. The IFC Ventures program proposes the establishment of eight PE funds to expand access by SME’s in high risk IDA countries to risk capital, by (among other things) supporting and leveraging the expertise of locally based fund managers and by providing advisory support to SMEs. IFC went through an RFP at the end of which six fund managers were selected. The proposal presented by a new joint venture that will bring together professionals from Extra Small Medium and Large (“XSML”), an Amsterdam based fund manager that has raised a global fund for SMEs, and Cenainvest, a local African PE team with over 10 years of PE experience in Africa, was selected to raise the Central Africa SME Fund (The “Fund”). The Fund will focus in two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo (“DRC”) and Central African Republic (“CAR”). The Fund’s average investment size will range $100K-500K and portfolio companies are expected to require substantial handholding from the fund manager. The Fund will be registered in the Netherlands as a Dutch limited liability company (“CV”), and will be structured with best standards of the PE funds industry.