Gabon Angel Investor Network, known as GAIN, has deployed 67,345,000 FCFA (about 118,000 dollars) across four companies since making its first investment in 2022. Five founders launched the network in 2021, and in the years since, the average ticket size has grown from 11.5 million FCFA (19,000 dollars) to 25 million FCFA (43,000 dollars). For a country recording just one venture capital deal worth roughly 1 million dollars in 2025, according to the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA), that growth matters.
The numbers look modest next to Lagos or Nairobi, and that is exactly the point. Central Africa as a whole accounted for only 10 deals and 27 million dollars in 2025, making it the smallest venture capital market on the continent. Cameroon, Gabon's neighbor within the same economic bloc, logged eight deals worth 26 million dollars alone, leaving Gabon with very little to build on.
GAIN is working in a market where fewer than 10 percent of startups can access bank credit at an early stage. Data from the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), cited by GAIN, shows that Gabon captured 18.25 percent of new credit in the CEMAC zone in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 63.93 percent for Cameroon. That gap shapes everything about how the network has to operate.
This month, GAIN hosted the Africa's Early Stage Investor Summit (AESIS) 2026 in Libreville, the Gabonese capital. Conversations on the sidelines with GAIN president Fabrice Nze Bekale and founding member and treasurer Vanessa Adande revealed that building an angel network from scratch in this context means staying flexible on almost every variable that investors elsewhere take for granted. The story of how they are pulling it off is worth paying close attention to.
Originally published by TechCabal.