AgDevCo Ventures is a newly launched investment vehicle within the AgDevCo group (a specialist impact investor that invests exclusively in the sub-Saharan African agriculture sector) which will target investment specifically in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda with an expected investment size of $1-3m per investment. The AgDevCo Ventures portfolio targets a high proportion of Black African-owned and -led businesses as well as businesses owned and led by women.
Bates Wells supported AgDevCo Ventures with their goal of creating mezzanine loan and options agreement documentation that seeks to reflect the values of clarity, proportionality and accessibility.
Emma Clague and Sung-Hyui Park advised on the debt documentation and Nirav Patel and Robbie Speakman advised on the share option documentation.
Melissa Manzo, General Counsel at AgDevCo, said: “We are very grateful for Sung-Hyui, Emma, Nirav and Robbie’s work putting together the investment templates for AgDevCo Ventures. They put a lot of thought into making sure that the documents are as user-friendly as possible. It is our hope that the thoughtful design of these templates will contribute to streamlining the investment process for AgDevCo Ventures’ investees, reducing overall time and cost spent on documentation. We valued the Bates Wells’ team expertise on this, including their previous work on the Equalising Deal Terms Project.”
Emma Clague commented: “We really enjoyed working with the AgDevCo Ventures teams on this important project, creating clear and accessible investment documents that reflect their thoughtful, equitable approach to supporting younger African agribusinesses”.
Nirav Patel said: “It is all too common for founders of early-stage businesses to struggle to decipher the legal jargon which embodies investment documents without incurring significant legal spend, so it was wonderful to work with the AgDevCo team in trying to tackle this issue in an innovative manner through crafting these accessible documents.”