Kuramo Trains 22 Fund Managers for Nigeria's $1 Billion SME Fund

A $1 billion naira-denominated fund for Nigerian small businesses is training the fund managers it may eventually back — and it hasn't closed a single naira yet. On October 30, the Kuramo Foundation for Sustainable Development launched the WIIF SME Fund Accelerator in Lagos, onboarding 22 first-time and emerging managers picked from 84 applicants across all six of Nigeria's geopolitical zones.

The Wholesale Impact Investment Fund (WIIF) was established by the Impact Investors Foundation and the National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, and Kuramo Capital Management runs it. The fund is targeting a $100 million first close, which it has not reached, according to Olamide Adeosun, vice president at Kuramo Capital, who spoke on behalf of the fund.

The scale of the problem is easy to size. Nigeria has roughly 39.7 million micro, small and medium enterprises, and the International Finance Corporation estimated in 2022 that they face an unmet financing need of $32.2 billion. In June 2025, the Federal Ministry of Finance committed $50 million to the vehicle. Adeosun says WIIF is now courting domestic pension funds and local development finance institutions as early institutional backers.

What does this change for fund managers?

WIIF won't write cheques to small businesses directly. It's a fund of funds, deploying capital into the intermediary vehicles that finance them — and it plans to invest in about 10 to 12 managers across the country, targeting a good share of emerging managers.

Adeosun points to the first wave of Nigerian private equity managers, firms such as Verod and CardinalStone, and argues a new generation hasn't followed. "When did you last hear of someone launching a new fund to invest in small businesses?" he said. "You see many new venture funds and many tech founders, but small business funds are rare."

Kuramo is blunt about why training precedes capital. "Capital deployed into managers who are not yet investment-ready does not create durable results," the firm said in a statement.

How the accelerator works

The 12-week programme runs to December and covers investment theses, financial modelling, fundraising, pipeline development, legal structuring and exit strategies.

Selection came down to differentiated strategies, not polish. "Many emerging managers are subject matter experts, such as engineers, who have not done financing before," said Ijeoma Madueke, sustainable finance lead at the Kuramo Foundation. Interviews used roughly three panellists and a scoring method. The cohort was widened in places to build a bigger pipeline.

Variety was deliberate:

• Two managers focus on the creative economy.
• One runs a multi-product strategy built entirely on Islamic financial products.
• One works on healthcare financing linked to outcomes.
• Managers come from the north, south, east and west, not just Lagos.

The programme sits inside what Kuramo calls its ABCD framework — Accelerate, Bridge, Catalyze and Develop — which grew out of earlier cohorts for women-led funds in Cape Town and Nairobi. This is the first run in Lagos and the first for a wholesale impact fund focused on small businesses. Beyond training, Kuramo offers warehousing and working capital facilities, plus shared services like legal support and fund administration.

What counts as success?

Madueke's bar is investment readiness: documents in place, a clear thesis, structures that can absorb capital. Adeosun is more specific. Success means WIIF can back two funds from the cohort, or two or more raise money from outside investors. One panellist told the team they examine 100 investments and fund two — a 2% hit rate. Against that, "a 10% success rate for managers would be an amazing achievement," Adeosun said.

The programme also delivers reality checks. One speaker told the cohort he sold his house to keep fundraising going for around six years. A pension fund sat on a panel so managers could hear directly what institutional money requires.

On early capital, Madueke is direct: a pension fund is an unlikely first investor for an emerging manager. Foundations and impact investors, often on concessional terms, come first.

The bet behind all of this: small businesses represent what Madueke calls 90% of Nigerian businesses, many keeping money "under the pillow" and refusing to hear the words 'equity' or 'debt'. WIIF's first close — and whether two of these 22 managers actually raise money — will tell practitioners whether Nigeria's SME fund-manager gap can be trained away.