Criterion Africa Partners

Organizational profile: 

Criterion Africa Partners (CAP) is a private equity firm focused on acquiring and developing assets across the forestry value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa. Criterion partners with proven management teams at growing companies to enhance productivity and create value for the benefit of all stakeholders in its key focus areas: plantation acquisition and rehabilitation; downstream manufacturing and biomass energy replacing fossil fuels.

Limited partners include prominent Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) who are increasingly active investing in African forestry and natural climate change solutions.

Financing Instrument: Equity 

Project scale: Typical investments range from $5 million to $30 million with a focus on catalyzing growth, increasing productivity, addressing new markets and meeting shareholder liquidity needs.

Recipient countries regions/country groups: CAP invests across Sub-Saharan Africa and is currently active in South Africa, Ghana, Eswatini, Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Gabon.

Recipient categories: Businesses

Eligibility Criteria:

Investment criteria include:

• Motivated management teams with meaningful ownership to ensure alignment of interests
• More than $5 million annual revenue with growth potential
• Strong customer relationships
• Squarely in the forestry sector - from the resource through to value creation/industrial processing and biomass energy
• Significant market opportunity

Application guidelines: CAP is interested in speaking with entrepreneurs, management teams and asset owners with companies operating across the entire forestry value chain and not solely in the forestry resource. Areas of interest include maturing greenfield plantations, industrial processing and biomass energy developers and integrators. Please fill out the contact form: https://www.criterionafrica.com/contact/

Last updated: 30 August 2023