Panel -- Venture Capital: Spurring entrepreneurship with venture capital

Panel Summary:

The goal of this panel is to define the venture capital opportunity in Africa, from both an investor and entrepreneur’s perspective. The recent growth in private equity investments in Africa begs the question of when venture capital investing will follow suit.

1. What role should venture capital play in African economic development? 
2. What rate of return can investors anticipate on VC investments in Africa? Can financial returns adequately compensate for investment risk, or should returns be defined more broadly (ie: include social returns) in a venture capital context?
3. How should private venture capital partner with the IFC, World Bank, and other development organizations?
   
4. What sectors/regions are best suited for venture capital at this stage?
   
5. How do you develop viable exit strategies? What criteria should be considered in Africa?
   
6. What is the process of sourcing venture capital funding?

Yemi Lalude has over ten years of engineering, business development, product marketing, and investing experience in the information technology industry. He joined Granite Global Ventures from Siebel Systems where he managed, and was instrumental in the start-up of, the customer satisfaction product line. Prior to Siebel, Yemi spent six years at Hewlett-Packard where he held engineering and leadership positions in the manufacturing and R&D functions of the inkjet printer business. He was part of the core group of employees who started and built Hewlett-Packard's Specialty Printing Systems business.

Yemi received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honors) from the University of Lagos (Nigeria), an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Business. He represents Granite Global Ventures on the boards of Intelliden, Accruent, and athenahealth. Yemi also invested in Netscaler (acquired by Citrix Systems) and Netli (acquired by Akamai).

In his spare time, Yemi enjoys flying airplanes and playing golf. He is also actively involved in mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs in the US and Africa.

Barbara is founder and CEO of first independent pan-African private equity Fund of Funds - Henshaw Capital Partners.  Until May 2007, she was Managing Director of the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA) and currently serves on its Executive Board.

After a 15 year career in business applications of information technology, she entered the African venture capital industry and helped establish the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA).

At AVCA, she was responsible for the development, fund raising and implementation of programs to promote and strengthen the private equity and venture capital industry in Africa including AVCA’s research and publications program, training program, industry briefing and conference program, advocacy and regulatory programs. 

Barbara has been instrumental in the development of innovative venture capital solutions in Africa. They include initiating the African Diaspora SME Fund; advocating for UK (and G8) tax incentives to investors in African venture capital; a African Technical Assistance Fund and the first independent African venture capital Fund of Funds.  In 2007, she advised the Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan Governments on the setting up of an SME venture capital fund, a technical assistance facility and an enabling regulatory environment for venture capital in East Africa.

She has featured in several print, electronic and broadcast media including CNN and the BBC discussing issues of venture capital and development in Africa.

She has a BSc in Computer Science and an M.Sc. in Business Systems Analysis and Design. She also qualified as a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and has trained professionally as a venture capital general partner (manager) and Limited Partner (investor).

Prior to her role at the African Venture Capital Association, she worked at Deloitte & Touche and the Catholic Fund for Oversees Development (CAFOD).