Sector theses
Where Vaya is actively originating
Five conviction calls that define where Vaya deploys origination resource, applies local intelligence and introduces structured capital. Living documents — updated as market conditions evolve.
Battery & Critical Minerals
Africa holds the feedstocks for the energy transition — Vaya routes them to capital.
Sub-Saharan Africa sits atop the world's largest reserves of cobalt, lithium, manganese, nickel and graphite. Yet most value accrues elsewhere. Vaya originates ventures that add processing, certification and traceability steps in-country — capturing margin that currently leaves on raw concentrate. We focus on DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, where geological endowment meets an increasingly coherent regulatory frame for beneficiation.
Energy Transition
600 million Africans without reliable power. The market is the problem — and the opportunity.
Energy poverty is not a charity problem — it is a market failure with identifiable off-takers, predictable revenue and demonstrable willingness to pay at a premium over kerosene or diesel gen-sets. Vaya originates distributed renewable developers, mini-grid operators, clean-cooking platforms and demand-aggregation utilities across ECOWAS and SADC markets where utility grids are absent or unreliable.
Agri-processing
Post-harvest loss is Africa's hidden subsidy to global commodity traders.
An estimated 30–40% of food produced in Sub-Saharan Africa never reaches an end consumer. Vaya focuses on ventures that cut this loss through cold-chain infrastructure, aggregation platforms, certified storage, and primary processing capacity — adding protein, oil, starch and fibre fractions in-country before export. We prioritise ventures with an institutional off-taker or anchor contract that validates demand before Vaya introduces capital.
Digital & Fintech Rails
The most banked continent by mobile, the least by branch. The gap is the product.
Africa leads the world in mobile money penetration yet formal credit, insurance, trade finance and cross-border settlement remain dramatically underserved. Vaya originates ventures building infrastructure-level rails — payment switches, credit bureaus, KYC utilities, remittance corridors and API-first banking layers — that other fintechs build on top of. We avoid consumer lending at volume until the regulatory environment in a given market is clear.
Logistics
Africa's intra-continental trade is 16% of total trade. The infrastructure to triple it is being built now.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating an integrated market of 1.4 billion people, but the logistics infrastructure to service it lags behind the policy. Vaya originates ventures in freight forwarding technology, customs-clearance automation, cold-chain haulage, port-adjacent warehousing and last-mile delivery — particularly at the corridor intersections that ECOWAS and SADC are prioritising for road and rail investment.
Building in one of these sectors?
Vaya reviews every thesis-aligned venture. Submit your pitch and the team will respond within five business days.
Theses are living documents updated quarterly. All origination activity is advisory only. Not an offer to sell any security.