Pan-African venture capital firm Five35 Ventures has sold its entire stake in Ghanaian agritech company Complete Farmer in a secondary transaction, reporting a 3.5-times return on its investment.

Five35 said the sale, completed in March 2026, generated a 38% internal rate of return over four years. The fund also said Complete Farmer’s valuation increased from $6 million to $49 million during the period.

Hema Vallabh, who founded Five35 Ventures and runs it with general partner Fatou Touré, said the buyer’s identity could not be disclosed because of confidentiality agreements. The fund wrote one of its first cheques to Complete Farmer in April 2022.

Commercial and fundraising decision

Vallabh said Five35 had considered increasing its investment in a later funding round but decided against doing so after determining that the valuation was beyond the fund’s range.

She said the exit was partly intended to demonstrate to investors that Five35 could deliver realised returns while continuing to raise capital. “We did not sell because we lacked faith in the company,” Vallabh said, describing Complete Farmer as one of the fund’s strongest performers with further potential.

“It was a commercial decision, a fundraising decision and a disciplined capital allocation decision,” she said.

Complete Farmer connects smallholder farmers with buyers, agricultural inputs and financing. Vallabh said the company had developed a commercial supply-chain platform linking production with predictable demand.

She also said women accounted for approximately 55% to 60% of the company’s customers when Five35 invested, while women made up about 80% of its post-harvest workforce. Those factors aligned with Five35’s gender-lens approach, which considers women’s participation as founders, leaders, workers or customers.

Focus on early-stage African companies

Five35 describes itself as a sector-agnostic fund investing at the pre-seed and seed stages in significantly technology-enabled businesses. It has a larger focus on sub-Saharan Africa, alongside a smaller allocation for North Africa.

The fund uses a pure-equity structure and prefers simple agreements for future equity, known as SAFEs, for early-stage investments. Vallabh previously founded the women’s entrepreneurship platform WomHub.

Five35 originally targeted a $30 million fund in 2022. Vallabh said it initially raised $1 million through its network and the 35 Club, with cheques starting at $35,000 and most investors being women who had not previously invested in venture capital as limited partners. The Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund became an anchor investor in late 2025.

Vallabh said Five35 had made 18 investments, reported a zero per cent portfolio failure rate and had an overall fund performance of about 2x based on unrealised gains. The fund’s target is at least three times the money on invested capital.

She said Five35 expected to close its fundraising within three to six months and planned to write larger cheques, increase its participation in secondary markets and examine exits more closely over the following six to 18 months.

The reported transaction comes amid a difficult exit environment for African venture capital. Briter has described exit routes as the sector’s tightest constraint, with exits particularly uncommon in agritech.