AFRICA VENTURE PRIMER

Mark Kleyner is a venture capitalist, corporate venture specialist, and startup advisor with deep experience across multiple funds in global and emerging markets. Through his work, Mark works closely with General Partners, corporate venture leaders, development finance institutions (DFIs), family offices, and angel syndicate leads across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. He actively sits on investment committees, heads up investment decisions for multi-jurisdictional funds in financial services and deep technology, and is widely regarded as one of Africa's most sought-after voices on the venture and investment ecosystem.

His core focus is as the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Dream VC, a leading venture capital institute and corporate venture advisory platform focused on emerging markets. Dream VC has trained and connected 400+ alumni investors across 50+ countries, whose collective funds manage over $10 billion in assets and actively deploy capital across Africa and other emerging markets. At Dream VC, Mark serves as a director, leads growth and B2B program design, and co-leads EDGE by Dream VC, the firm's corporate venture enablement arm, supporting corporations in strategising, building, and executing venture capital funds across sectors, including fintech, energy, advanced manufacturing, logistics, and infrastructure.

Mark is a frequent speaker and moderator at leading global investor and technology forums, including GITEX, SuperReturn, AIM, and the Deep Tech Summit, where he regularly shares stages with senior GPs, corporate venture leaders, institutional investors, and ecosystem builders. Beyond formal platforms, he remains deeply embedded in investor and operator networks, serving as a board member in several entities and as an active angel investor with more than 30 direct and indirect investments across early-stage African and emerging market startups, giving him direct, practitioner-level visibility into how venture deals are sourced, evaluated, structured, and scaled in practice.

Thaheer Mullins is an operator-investor and ecosystem builder working at the intersection of venture capital, angel investing, and corporate innovation across Africa and the Middle East. Through his work, Thaheer collaborates closely with founders, angel syndicate leads, venture capital firms, corporates, family offices, and public-sector innovation stakeholders, with hands-on involvement spanning deal sourcing, investment structuring, portfolio support, and cross-border market entry.

He brings deep practical experience in early-stage investing, having managed and advised on both equity and grant-based investment programmes, and has supported startups from pilot design through to commercial scale by leveraging corporate partnerships, procurement-led growth, and investor access. As an active angel investor and syndicate lead, Thaheer regularly co-invests alongside angels, early-stage VCs, and strategic partners, helping shape early cap tables and de-risk first institutional cheques across multiple African markets. Across his roles, Thaheer has reviewed and executed more than 58 startup deals as a lead investor and investment committee member, spanning early-stage technology and deep-tech ventures across African markets.

Beyond direct investing, Thaheer plays a visible role in ecosystem development and corporate–startup collaboration. He advises corporates, governments, and development institutions on innovation strategy, venture partnerships, and deep-tech commercialisation, and is a founding shareholder of the SNDBX Innovation Centre, a venture studio embedded within a major public hospital and linked to universities and research institutes in Southern Africa.

Thaheer is a frequent speaker and moderator at leading investor, innovation, and family office forums across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, including LEAP (Saudi Arabia), AfriLabs (Cape Town), GITEX / Expand North Star (Dubai), the African Startup Conference (Algiers), AIM Congress (Abu Dhabi), the Deep Tech Summit (Morocco), La Réunion Invest, and the India–Africa Entrepreneurship & Investment Summit (Nairobi). Beyond formal stages, he remains deeply embedded in private investor and operator networks where deals, pilots, and co-investment opportunities are first shared, debated, and shaped, giving him direct, execution-level visibility into how early-stage ventures are evaluated, financed, and scaled across emerging markets.

Oluwadamilola (Dami) Thompson is an investment professional, venture ecosystem operator, and governance specialist with over 16 years of experience working across Africa and global markets. Her work sits at the intersection of venture capital, risk intelligence, cross-border expansion, and institutional-grade due diligence, supporting investors and founders navigating complex emerging market environments.

Dami operates across multiple sides of the venture and investment ecosystem, spanning institutional venture capital, corporate leadership, portfolio oversight, founder advisory, and angel investing. She has held senior roles in both investment and operator environments, including serving as Vice President at EchoVC Partners and as Vice President and Global Head of Emerging Markets at Trade X. In these capacities, she worked at the intersection of capital allocation, market entry, operational scaling, and frontier-market execution, giving her practical exposure to both investor decision-making and real-world company building across emerging markets.

She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Diligence Africa, a firm focused on delivering risk intelligence, due diligence, governance, and compliance solutions to global investors, venture capital funds, family offices, development finance institutions, and high-growth startups operating across African markets. Through Diligence Africa, she supports institutional investors in strengthening investment processes, improving governance standards, and executing disciplined, data-driven investment decisions across early-stage and growth-stage transactions.

Across her career, Dami has been involved in evaluating and supporting more than 40 portfolio companies and has personally invested as an angel across 25+ startups in emerging markets. This combination of institutional investing, corporate leadership, advisory work, and direct angel exposure provides her with execution-level visibility into founder risk, governance discipline, cross-border structuring, and scaling realities in frontier ecosystems.

Beyond her direct investment and advisory work, Dami remains actively engaged in strengthening the broader venture ecosystem through mentorship, ecosystem partnerships, and structured support for emerging fund managers and startup operators. Her experience bridging institutional investor expectations with on-the-ground operational realities enables her to contribute a disciplined, risk-aware perspective to investment committees and early-stage investors navigating African and Middle Eastern markets.