Venture capital (VC) is a fiercely competitive industry, with firms locked in a constant race to back the most promising startups, knowing that portfolio quality ultimately determines whether they can deliver returns. To win deals in this crowded space, funds typically differentiate themselves in two ways: either by offering founders attractive terms or providing deep, hands-on support to help their startups scale faster.
Besides these two options, Consonance, a pan-African VC firm, also differentiates itself with research on a wide range of topics. Going through the firm’s website, you can find research on how to unlock Nigeria’s prosperity, economic transformation and productivity in Cote d’Ivoire, the success story of Botswana’s economic resurgence, and, more surprisingly, a detailed report on Nigeria’s fashion industry.
“Context beats capital,” Jadesola Campbell, Consonance’s principal, told . “Our bottom-up research turns noise into systems maps, not hot takes. It helps us underwrite better, source earlier, and avoid unforced errors.”
Consonance backs startups from pre-seed through Series A, with its first fund writing cheques that averaged around $500,000. The firm operates with a three-pronged strategy: its core venture program for early-stage equity bets, a venture studio that builds companies from scratch, and debt financing that provides secured, non-dilutive loans to venture-backed businesses.
“Our role is to back operators who turn bottlenecks into platforms-and then help them compound,” Campbell told .
For this week’s Ask an Investor, I spoke to Jadesola Campbell, the principal at Consonance, to understand how the firm thinks about its research, its support for startups, and how the firm thinks about the future of African venture capital.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s your firm’s core thesis?
We invest where three circles overlap. Foundational prosperity: human capital, social capital, real assets, digital rails, and fintech. Fragmented value chains: chokepoints whose removal unlocks system-wide value. Scalar business models: companies that don’t just scale, but compound cash flows and market power in the real economy.
Our role is to back operators who turn bottlenecks into platforms-and then help them compound.
Who drives research, and how does it feed sourcing?
The investment team owns it. We start from the five prosperity pillars, map chokepoints, and identify scalable fixes. That feeds directly into deal sourcing, venture-building, and policy dialogues.
Do you see your research as ecosystem-building, LP education, or part of the firm’s competitive edge?
All three. For the ecosystem aspect, we see it as a shining light on overlooked foundations. We also use our research to educate limited partners by demystifying Africa’s under-analysed markets.
On the edge part, our research allows us to spot flywheels before they form.
How many exits has Consonance recorded to date?
We’ve had five exits. Three full, two partial. The partial exits are Medallion (Nigeria’s densest data centre, majority acquired by Digital Realty, a Fortune 500 company), SeamlessHR. Our full exits are Student Accommod8, She Leads Africa, Wealth.ng.
How are you balancing early liquidity through secondaries versus waiting for strategic acquisitions or IPOs?
We run two tracks. Programmatic secondaries at qualified rounds, usually exiting ~20% of our position when there’s clean liquidity. Strategic exits and IPOs for step-change value.
In Fund II, we’ve added self-liquidating structures-like revenue-share notes with capped payback and redeemable prefs with cash sweeps-so LPs see early and mid-term cash returns without capping upside.
Would you rather double down on a few clear winners or stay diversified across 30+ names?
Both, sequenced. Fund I’s early-stage tilt meant breadth. Fund II is about depth: larger checks, higher ownership, and meaningful reserves to double down where traction proves out, while still maintaining portfolio resilience.
Given FX volatility and uneven growth across African markets, how are you building your portfolio today?
We have three rules. The first is multiple liquidity paths (secondaries, self-liquidating instruments, M&A).
Our second is chokepoint businesses with natural FX hedges (USD-linked pricing, export or diaspora flows, cost-plus contracts).
We also look at the quality of earnings: recurring revenue, strong unit economics, disciplined working-capital cycles. We prefer companies that can pass through FX and inflation, or that naturally earn in hard currency.
For Consonance, what does success mean beyond financial returns?
Success means building prosperity. We measure it across market creation (formalisation, productivity), gender inclusion (we apply 2X Challenge criteria), youth employment and skills. Resilience & sustainability, aligned with IFC Performance Standards and IRIS+ KPIs.
Which portfolio company best embodies your impact?
VerifyMe. They built the trust infrastructure that powers credit inclusion and safer employment. They also formalise the informal, create jobs, and are led by resilient founders we respect.
What are your thoughts on local capital for African VC?
Local capital is the anchor tenant. It provides context and signals. But pensions alone can’t carry the load. The unlock is tax-incentivised corporate allocations into pooled structures, with matched pools and guarantee sleeves to crowd-in institutional foreign capital-without moral hazard.
There’s a growing debate over the imbalance of foreign vs. local capital in African tech. How do you think about this tension?
Local = context. Foreign = scale. Problems start when scale comes without context. We see local capital as the SPF—it protects and guides foreign capital so it compounds, not burns.
Your firm’s thesis is broad. Which themes are you doubling down on for the next cycle?
The first is digital and capital markets infrastructure (ID, payments, clearing, data centres, registries). We also double down on food and agricultural systems (storage, logistics, inputs, processing, trade finance, industrials). We also look at cultural and consumer economies (payments-adjacent, apparel, media monetisation). Climate is cross-cutting, not a silo.
If you could design the ideal investment for Consonance tomorrow, what would it look like?
A post-revenue, high-margin food-systems platform in Nigeria with Africa-wide glidepath; $1M+ ARR, over 60% gross margin, hard-currency exposure, disciplined founders, clean governance, and a clear unit-economic engine that scales.
What’s the most contrarian bet you’ve made—or wanted to make?
Medallion. At first, it looked like a converted supermarket, not a shiny greenfield box. But it had unmatched network density and location economics. We underwrote the interconnection gravity, not cosmetics. That’s what made it one of Nigeria’s crown digital assets and drove the Digital Realty acquisition.
What does post-investment support look like at Consonance?
We provide hands-on operator support. That’s CEO counsel & governance (boards that work), regulatory navigation, talent pipelines, enterprise sales, and capital networks.
We also offer value-chain mapping to expand market creation.
We have institutionalised this into the Akọda Build Program-structured pre- and post-investment support. We track impact with hard KPIs: gross margin lift, unit cost reduction, working-capital turns, net revenue retention, jobs created, gender metrics, and time-to-next-milestone.
In 10 years, how do you want Consonance remembered?
We want founders to remember us as the steady hands who never bail. We want limited partners to remember us as the disciplined stewards who delivered top-quartile DPI with real impact.
By the ecosystem, we want to be known as builders of prosperity-more production, fairer distribution, better jobs.
What blind spots do you think African VC still has today, and how is Consonance trying to close them?
For one, there’s no systems thinking (Gall’s Law ignored). There’s also copying models without building the enabling infrastructure and compliance spine. We focus on getting simple systems to work locally before layering complexity.
Mark your calendars! Moonshot by is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Join Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Early bird tickets now 20% off—don’t snooze! moonshot..com
