Lateral Frontiers VC

African corporate LPs: 7% in 2024 → 41% in 2025. European LPs: 70% → 21%. Africa is funding Africa now.

Bottom line: African VC isn't "back" — it's evolving. Less tourist capital. More conviction capital. The next vintage will separate the operators from the optimists.

Everyone's celebrating African VC's $4.1B "comeback." I'm looking at the fine print. 🧵

Meanwhile, international LP appetite remains cautious. FX risk, macro uncertainty, exit timelines. The funds raising successfully? Deep local networks + sector focus + realistic return expectations.

The real story? Domestic investors now represent 45% of commitments — highest ever recorded. African capital backing African founders. That's the durable shift worth watching.

60% of that capital went to just TWO sectors: fintech and energy. But here's what the headlines miss: much of the "energy" number is debt facilities, not equity. Venture debt ≠ venture capital.

African VC raised $4.1B in 2025. Cool. But here's what matters: domestic investors hit 45% of commitments. Up from 23%. The "foreign capital will save Africa" narrative is dying. Quietly. Good riddance.

I had a brilliant fintech operator in my office last week, just getting into stablecoins, said something that stuck with me: “Payments is 60% compliance.” It’s easy to focus on UI, speed, fees—but the real moat in money movement is trust. That trust is earned through licensing, audits, AML/KYC, regulatory fluency, and operational rigor. The institutions that have lasted—Visa, Western Union, legacy banks—didn’t just build pipes. They built compliance infrastructure that could scale globally and survive scrutiny. Stablecoins are now trying to rewire global payments from first principles. The tech is exceptional. The liquidity is real. But compliance? Still catching up. The mistake would be thinking that great code replaces great compliance. It doesn’t. If you want to move real volume through stablecoins—fiat on/off ramps, payroll, commerce, cross-border—you’ll run into the same expectations as any traditional financial institution. The unlock is this: treat compliance as a product. Design it, test it, scale it. Build it into the architecture, not as a patch. Just like security became invisible but essential in Web2, compliance will become the defining layer of trust in Web3 and payments. The future of stablecoin infra will be won by those who see compliance not as a bottleneck—but as a distribution and defensibility engine. If you’re building in this space and thinking deeply about how to integrate compliance from the ground up, reach out to me or the team @lateralcap . We want to hear from you.

@jackchong_jc @FronteraEC @amitochu @Genia_XBT @HadickM @peterschroederr @sgleahy @nael_idrx @0xblockboy @bpmilne @Nick_van_Eck @wagmiAlexander @DavidTaylor Check out @MentoLabs

tagging folks passionate about on-chain FX @FronteraEC @amitochu @Genia_XBT @HadickM @peterschroederr @sgleahy @nael_idrx @0xblockboy @bpmilne @Nick_van_Eck @wagmiAlexander @davidtaylor

Doom and gloom tweets about climate change are annoying and more corrosive than they are helpful. But i think it is important we galvanise enough effort to preserve our environment for the future. 🧵

Next DeFi🦄= Real Use Cases + Demand + Infrastructure + Ecosystem Build+ Network Effects + Regulatory Clarity Real use cases = global pain points + cross-border focus 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Users = (Pain Points × Smartphone Penetration) + (Unbanked Population × Digital Infra) Demand = Merchants x Users Infrastructure = Payment Infra + Local Channel Integration 🌐Network effects = Adoption = User Adoption × Merchant Acceptance ⚖️Regulatory Clarity = Licensing and Registration + Financial Stability and Systemic Risk Management

At Lateral, these are the solutions we look for and the founders we want to back. If you are a founder building tech solutions in and for emerging markets in climatetech and fintech, please reach out.

Ref: x.com/sgrin77/status…

EMs have been seeing a quiet deeptech revolution where founders are building complex tech solutions for local problems, creating blueprints for global impact. This has spread to all industries including renewables, health & biotech, agriculture and financial services.

Download the whitepaper here: zonenetwork.com/files/Regulate…

@obi_emetarom, Co-Founder of @zonenetworkhq, explores the intersection of blockchain and regulation in his new whitepaper, providing insights on how financial institutions and regulators can embrance blockchain responsibly to ensure trust, transparency, and scalability.

Nigeria’s crypto revolution can be a great blueprint for Africa’s crypto’s movement. Their adoption has been crazy but the features protecting users might be the ones keeping others out.