When Joevas Asare founded ARK with his co-founder in 2019, he had already spent almost a decade working in development finance. With experience across leading institutions and a degree from Oxford, he assumed that raising finance for a promising venture would be relatively straightforward.

 

ARK was born from a frustration Joevas had repeatedly encountered in his work with development finance institutions: the claim that Africa lacked bankable local ventures. This did not reflect what he saw firsthand. Across the continent, he encountered ambitious businesses solving real problems, creating jobs and developing innovations with the potential to transform markets.

 

He set out to help close that gap. Yet, during ARK's own fundraising journey, the team discovered just how fragmented and difficult the funding landscape could be—even for founders with relevant experience and strong networks. ARK therefore had to build its own systems and develop a business model grounded in sustainable trading income.

 

That experience shaped the philosophy we still hold today: funding and investment are resources that can accelerate a business's vision, but securing finance should never become the sole purpose of the business itself.

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Africa has the world's fastest-growing population and is producing innovations with the potential to shape not only the continent, but the wider world. Yet many of the businesses behind these solutions face even greater barriers to finance than ARK encountered.

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We recognise that founders understand their markets and the problems they are solving better than anyone else. Our approach therefore begins with helping them build strong trading income, supported by catalytic and concessional finance. We place particular emphasis on diaspora investment—one of the continent's most significant yet underutilised sources of patient capital, expertise and market connections.

 

Through partnerships across the countries we serve, we advocate for an ecosystem approach that establishes diaspora investment as a scalable asset class and helps close the financing gap faced by Africa's missing middle.

 

ARK works across seven African countries and has supported ventures to mobilise more than £10 million+ in funding and £30 million+ in investment. But the numbers are not what make us most proud. Our success is in the founders creating jobs, transforming markets and building solutions that improve lives across Africa.

 

Today, ARK is led by Joevas Asare, Radhika Sanyal and Sidi Saccoh, who bring complementary experience across development finance, business growth and diaspora investment. Together, they lead ARK's work to strengthen Africa's most promising businesses and establish diaspora investment as a scalable asset class.