In Africa, the secondaries market — where investors trade equity stakes held in investment funds from one another — is a nascent one that consists of only a small pool of international buyers and local players, the New York-based Global Private Capital Association trade group said in a report last year.

Secondaries deal activity in Africa has been constrained by the dominance of development finance institutions — who have been historically unwilling to sell their stakes — in the capital base of African funds. But that trend has shown its first sign of potential change, GPCA said, following a series of fund equity stake sales by the UK’s British International Investment in February 2024.

Sango wants to carve out a leading position in Africa’s secondaries market, on the belief that the space is primed for a boom in the near future, Okello said. Founded in 2011, the firm did its first secondaries transactions in Africa five years later, he said. Last year, Sango became a majority holder in Synergy Private Equity Fund II, a $250 million fund that both BII and the European Investment Bank backed in 2018 to invest in businesses in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.