Al Qassimi Office to invest in African startups: Sheikh Ahmed Bin Faisal Al-Qassimi’s private office for strategic alliances and policies, Al Qassimi Office, launched an Africa-focused venture capital fund to invest in African startups, its CEO Farouk Khailann said on LinkedIn. The move comes as part of four new initiatives rolled out by the office to ramp up UAE-Africa bilateral relations and support development in Africa.

#1- The fund: The fund will back African startups with “the resources and support to scale in their respective countries and potentially establish a presence in the UAE,” Khailann said, without disclosing the specific size of the fund.

#2- Al Qassimi Office will also make impact investments to reduce development disparities between Africa and the West, under a new 10-year partnership with the Global Wealth Forum (GWF), dubbed the Decade of Action for Africa Project. The collaboration will see the two parties leverage resources from high-net-worth individuals in the Middle East and globally to support job creation and economic growth in Africa. The two will also deploy the GWF’s Global Wealth Fund to help African governments market key projects to hard-to-reach investors.

#3- Targeting the agriculture sector: A new African presidential farms initiative, dubbed Presfarm Africa, will see Al Qassimi Office work with African presidents to develop model farms and promote agricultural development, agro-tourism, and export windows, focusing on securing off-taker agreements with Middle Eastern supermarkets and food distributors.

#4- The office also introduced a Sheikh Zayed Africa Leadership Program to mentor young African politicians and provide them with networking windows and financial support, in a bid to address leadership challenges in the region.

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