Novastar Ventures, a Pan-African venture capital firm has secured $25 million in equity investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for its new  Africa People + Planet Fund, which is aimed at supporting startups building agriculture and climate solutions.

The fund which is Novastar’s third fund , follows the $80m East Africa Fund and the $108m Africa Fund II, which enabled the firm expand its reach to West Africa. Its previous fund was invested in startups such as TradeDepot, fintech Moniepoint, insurtech Turaco, furniture start-up MoKo, health-tech mpharma and agtech firm iProcure.

According to  co-founder and managing partner Andrew Carruthers,going  forward, the VC firm will be looking to building on this experience and use the same tools and strategies to support sustainable, planet-positive, mass-market business models across Africa that the rest of the world can learn from,”.

Although the details of other limited partners who made commitments are unknown, the Nairobi and Lagos-based VC firm aims to raise over $200 million, making it one of the largest funds in the region.

With the funding ,the VC firm aims to back cleantech startups including clean utilities, electric mobility, smart logistics. Novastar will also back climate techs that use innovative business models “to deploy regenerative forestry, agriculture and aquaculture, biofuels, and biochar, that protect biodiversity, improves soil health and captures carbon,” while generating more opportunities for smallholder farming. The VC firm is availing more funding for clean techs in Africa, which were the second most funded startups in the region last year, after fintechs.

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