« Ce fonds privé qui fait grandir les PME africaines » : An article from Anne Cheyvialle on I&P for Le Figaro

In this article from Le Figaro, Anne Cheyvialle describes the rise of the Burkinabe agricultural processing company Agroserv, now the leading player in the maize value chain in Burkina Faso and on its way to becoming one of the most important players in West Africa, and how I&P, through its various financing and support vehicles, has contributed to this growth.

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I&P, through the I&P Acceleration in the Sahel (IPAS) program and Sinergi Burkina, has been supporting Agroserv since 2017 and has contributed to the scaling up of this Burkinabe agricultural SME created in 2008 by Siaka Sanon via different financing tools: seed financing and capital investment, support provided by the Sinergi Burkina team and technical assistance.

In 2022, Oikocredit and I&P, this time through the IPAE 2 fund, jointly invested €6.2 million in Agroserv's capital, while financing partners BIO and EDFI AgriFi will lend the company another €6 million.

This rise of Agroserv illustrates I&P's vocation to intervene in the entire life cycle of a company, from the seed phase of start-ups to the capital financing of mature SMEs with contributions of between 500,000 and 5 million euros. 5 million. "These sizes of companies are rarely supported in Africa. Traditional private equity funds intervene on larger tickets (average of 10 million)

"If we want to pursue our involvement in these fragile, complicated countries, where the entrepreneurial fabric is young, we must come with adapted tools."  Sébastien Boyé, Co-CEO of I&P

I&P has supported 250 companies, including 50 invested in the last twelve months, and has €400 million under management. After two initial funds of €50 million each, a third will be launched in a few weeks, for between €60 million and €80 million. The team has also grown significantly, from 15 people in 2011 to 160, 140 of whom are based in Africa. And to boost their strike force, they have just signed a partnership with Mastercard for an amount of 200 million dollars, including 150 million in private equity and 50 million in technical assistance.