A newly released white paper by FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, together with market intelligence firm Briter and SAIS (Scaling Agriculture Innovations through Start-ups), shines an important light on the growing role of venture studios across Africa’s innovation ecosystem.
The report, Venture Studios in Africa, explores how venture studios are helping build stronger, more investment-ready ventures in complex and underserved markets, while also unpacking the structural realities that continue to shape entrepreneurship and innovation across the continent.
At Enviu, we are encouraged to see increasing recognition for models that go beyond funding alone and invest deeply in venture building, ecosystem development and long-term systems change.
The report maps more than 40 active venture studios across Africa and benchmarks their performance against traditional early-stage support models such as incubators and accelerators. The findings suggest that deeply embedded venture building models can help ventures raise follow-on funding faster, access more commercial capital and strengthen execution in frontier markets.
Enviu is featured throughout the report as a case study of a systems-oriented venture studio model focused on regenerative agriculture, circular economy and zero waste sectors.
Our approach focuses on developing interconnected ventures, strengthening value chains, coordinating ecosystem actors and helping create the enabling conditions for entirely new markets to emerge. Several themes explored in the paper strongly resonate with our experience building ventures in sectors that require long-term systems transformation:
- Venture studios can play an important role in building investment-ready ventures in underserved sectors and markets;
- Ecosystem building and market creation are often just as important as venture creation itself;
- Long-term transitions such as regenerative agriculture, circular economy and energy transition require patient and fit-for-purpose capital;
- Grant and philanthropic funding can function as critical ecosystem infrastructure, particularly in sectors that require sustained de-risking;
- Liquidity constraints and limited secondary transactions remain major structural challenges for venture studios and early-stage investors across Africa.
One of the most important questions raised by the report is how venture studios become sustainable institutions over time, especially in ecosystems where exit pathways and follow-on capital remain limited.
For Enviu, this reinforces the importance of building resilient institutional models that are less dependent on short-term liquidity cycles. Through steward ownership, philanthropic partnerships, ecosystem activation and differentiated approaches between venture build and growth stages, we continue to explore models designed for long-term systems transformation.
As conversations around venture building in Africa continue to evolve, this report marks an important step toward a more grounded and evidence-based understanding of what it takes to build meaningful ventures and markets in frontier ecosystems.
We encourage founders, investors, ecosystem builders, DFIs, philanthropies and partners working on innovation in Africa to download and engage with the report.
Read the FMO White Paper: Venture Studios in Africa
