- Nigeria’s Bank of Industry has named Kuramo Capital Management to run the $170.6 million DICE Fund of Funds under the iDICE program
- The deal is Kuramo’s second major state mandate in two years, confirming its position as Nigeria’s preferred manager for government-backed venture capital
- Success depends on whether Kuramo can raise matching private capital faster than the program’s track record suggests
Nigeria’s development bank Bank of Industry Limited (BOI) has appointed Kuramo Capital Management as fund manager of the DICE Fund of Funds, a vehicle built to channel at least $170.6 million into the country’s technology and creative startups. The contract, signed in Abuja on June 30 between BOI chief executive Olasupo Olusi and Kuramo founder Wale Adeosun, is one of the largest government-backed venture capital commitments ever made on the continent.
The fund sits under iDICE, the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises program, which the Nigerian government launched in 2023 with support from the African Development Bank, the French development agency AFD and the Islamic Development Bank. Nigeria’s federal government is making an anchor commitment of $85.3 million. Kuramo now has to match that figure, dollar for dollar, by attracting private investors, doubling the pool to its $170.6 million target.
The mechanics matter because they explain why the government thinks this structure will work where direct grants often fail. The state’s contribution is designed as a junior tranche, absorbing the first 30 percent of any losses. That cushion is meant to reduce the risk for private investors, encouraging pension funds, family offices and foreign investors to commit money they might otherwise consider too risky for early-stage African startups. The fund is targeting a 20 percent net annual return. It aims to return 2.4 times the capital invested over its lifetime, figures broadly in line with what mature venture funds elsewhere in Africa have promised investors.
Rather than funding startups directly, the DICE Fund of Funds will invest in a set of smaller venture capital and micro venture capital funds, which will then back individual businesses. Officials say this design is meant to spread money beyond Lagos and Abuja into all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. This geographic reach has eluded most of Nigeria’s existing venture ecosystem.
What makes this appointment particularly significant is that it is not Kuramo’s first. In July 2024, the nonprofit organization Impact Investors Foundation named Kuramo manager of its Nigeria Wholesale Impact Investment Fund, a separate naira-denominated vehicle with a $1 billion target and initial backing of $50 million from the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning. Two major state mandates within two years mean that Kuramo has effectively become the Nigerian government’s default choice when it wants a fund-of-funds built and managed at scale, a status few African asset managers currently hold.
Founded in New York in 2010 by Wale Adeosun, Kuramo has spent more than a decade positioning itself as a bridge between global capital and African private equity. In 2011, it opened its Nairbobi office, then a Lagos office, a year later. According to figures published by the firm and industry body AVCA, Kuramo has helped channel $3.5 billion into African private equity firms and businesses, anchoring more than 15 funds and backing over 200 companies across roughly 30 countries. Its own regulatory filings, however, show a comparatively modest $257.6 million in directly managed assets as of December 2025, a gap that highlights how much of Kuramo’s influence comes from mobilizing other people’s money rather than deploying its own balance sheet. Adeosun himself, a former chief investment officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and managing director at the MacArthur Foundation, was named LP Person of the Year at the 2024 Private Equity Africa Awards.
The bigger question for entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers is timing. iDICE was unveiled in 2023 with $617.7 million in pledged financing. Yet, its first real capital deployment, a $64 million commitment to Ventures Platform’s Pan African Fund II alongside the International Finance Corporation, British International Investment, Standard Bank of South Africa and Proparco, only closed in November 2025. That is close to three years between announcement and actual money moving. Nigerian officials have also rolled out a combined $110 million in debt financing through the BOI/iDICE Debt Fund and an Islamic finance vehicle, the IsDB Murabaha Debt Fund, widening the toolkit available to startups beyond pure equity.
For founders outside Lagos and Abuja, the promise is straightforward. If Kuramo can select credible underlying fund managers and move capital quickly, entrepreneurs in cities like Kano, Enugu, or Port Harcourt could gain access to venture funding that has historically been concentrated in the country’s largest cities. For private investors, the appeal lies in the government’s loss-absorbing tranche, which lowers the risk of entering a market many still consider unproven. For Nigeria’s broader economy, the deal is part of a wider shift, with the sovereign wealth fund NSIA also striking a $50 million innovation partnership with Japan’s development agency JICA earlier this year, suggesting the state now sees itself as an active venture investor rather than a passive regulator.
The test now moves from paperwork to execution. Kuramo has 12 to 24 months of comparable history to beat if it wants to show that a signed contract in Abuja translates into checks reaching Nigerian founders faster than the program has managed so far.
Idriss Linge
