Jun 19, 2026 · 31 min · 11 segments
Sango Capital was created to be a bridge between global capital and African opportunity. In this episode, Co-Founder and Managing Partner Richard Okello (formerly of Bridgewater Associates and Makena…
Richard OkelloGuest
Chipo MuwowoHost
was broken at the old system? So besides there not being sufficient commercial capital, what other issues were there with the previous system that you were trying to get in a small way correct?
So I think if you looked at Africa over the last 30 years, actually longer, if you went back to 1984 when you had the oldest private equity fund, I think the earliest private equity fund, Africa went through a period I think of about 15 or 16 years where investments were largely driven by commercial actors.
And if you look at the returns, and Cambridge Associates has done numbers on this, right, you'll find that Africa basically outperformed everyone else, the US, you know, Europe, Asia, Latin America by significant margins, right? And then I think at some point, a number of different governments thought, boy, if the private sector is taking off, why don't we use that as a development tool? And then Africa started to get defined as, hey, private investments in Africa are for development.
And the amount of capital interested in going here to develop it and the nature of that capital is important but not sufficient for what you need here, right? And so that was the old dynamic.
And so at some point, you had significant amounts of capital coming to Africa that were primarily driven by the need to develop.
Not the need – to deliver a commercial return that then attracts other people and then to drive development through that process, right? And so that's, I think, one of the things we wanted to try to affect.
In fact, when we started our business, I think we were the first business of our type multi-managed and direct that closed that had pure private capital it hadn't really been that before and it was for that reason interesting i
was broken at the old system? So besides there not being sufficient commercial capital, what other issues were there with the previous system that you were trying to get in a small way correct?
So I think if you looked at Africa over the last 30 years, actually longer, if you went back to 1984 when you had the oldest private equity fund, I think the earliest private equity fund, Africa went through a period I think of about 15 or 16 years where investments were largely driven by commercial actors.
And if you look at the returns, and Cambridge Associates has done numbers on this, right, you'll find that Africa basically outperformed everyone else, the US, you know, Europe, Asia, Latin America by significant margins, right? And then I think at some point, a number of different governments thought, boy, if the private sector is taking off, why don't we use that as a development tool? And then Africa started to get defined as, hey, private investments in Africa are for development.
And the amount of capital interested in going here to develop it and the nature of that capital is important but not sufficient for what you need here, right? And so that was the old dynamic.
And so at some point, you had significant amounts of capital coming to Africa that were primarily driven by the need to develop.
Not the need – to deliver a commercial return that then attracts other people and then to drive development through that process, right? And so that's, I think, one of the things we wanted to try to affect.
In fact, when we started our business, I think we were the first business of our type multi-managed and direct that closed that had pure private capital it hadn't really been that before and it was for that reason interesting i
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