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Nneka Eze is Managing Partner at VestedWorld, an early-stage investment firm backing entrepreneurs building essential goods and services across Africa.
After studying economics at Harvard and beginning her career at McKinsey, Nneka moved to Kenya in 2009 and spent nearly 12 years at Dalberg working across Africa. Today, she invests in businesses across agribusiness, healthcare, consumer sectors, and enabling technologies, with a belief that private capital and entrepreneurship can help Africa follow a development trajectory similar to East Asia.
In this episode we cover:
• 01:09 Why Nneka left the US to build her career in Africa, and what she discovered after moving to Kenya
• 08:38 Lessons from nearly 12 years at Dalberg, including building its Nigeria office and realizing the limitations of advisory work without capital
• 10:58 How personal angel investments, serendipity, faith, and a written life plan eventually led her into venture capital
• 18:05 VestedWorld's investment strategy, why African and female founders remain underfunded, and why applying the Silicon Valley VC model to Africa can be a mistake
• 24:21 Why agribusiness may be one of Africa's biggest investment opportunities, and how Victory Farms built one of the world's fastest-growing aquaculture businesses
• 33:29 Nneka's experience surviving breast cancer, her encounter with faith during that period, and how it changed the way she thought about purpose, healthcare, and how she wanted to spend her life
• 41:12 What Nneka hopes VestedWorld can accomplish over the next decade through job creation, overlooked founders, and building a lasting African investment institution
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