Wasoko cofounder Daniel Yu launches $100 million Africa Jobs Fund

Daniel Yu, co-founder of Wasoko, the Kenyan B2B e-commerce company that merged with Egypt’s MaxAB, has launched the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), a new philanthropic investment fund which aims to mobilise $100 million over the next five years.

The fund intends to support companies that create high-productivity jobs across Africa. According to the fund, AFJ will focus on export manufacturing and international labour mobility, two sectors it considers among the continent’s strongest pathways to economic mobility and poverty reduction.

This launch comes as Africa faces deepening poverty and unemployment pressures. Despite years of startup growth and the rise of investment in African innovation, formal job creation has struggled to keep pace with population growth and labour market demand. In 2025, around 439 million people on the continent were living below the extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day, while Africa’s average unemployment rate stood at 8.91%. At the same time, only about three million formal jobs are created on the continent annually. 

AJF argues that the widening gap between labour force growth and access to stable, income-generating employment has become one of Africa’s most urgent development challenges.

“Persistent poverty is, at its core, a jobs problem. Africa has hundreds of millions of working-age people reliant on subsistence agriculture or informal work that pays a few dollars a day,” says Daniel Yu, Founding Partner of the Africa Jobs Fund, in a statement. 

“Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income. 

“AJF exists to back the companies that create those jobs and opportunities. Nothing else in development comes close to the impact of getting this right, and that is why I am building AJF.”

The fund estimates that its investments could increase African workers’ earnings by more than $50 billion over time and help at least 250,000 low-income people double their lifetime income.

To achieve this, AJF intends to invest across two core areas. In export manufacturing, the fund plans to support businesses tackling the high setup costs that often prevent African manufacturers from scaling globally. 

These barriers include worker training, supply chain development, buyer acquisition, and establishing operational systems capable of meeting international demand. 

AJF notes that it believes helping companies overcome these constraints could unlock larger pools of commercial capital and integrate African manufacturers into global supply chains.

The second focus area is international labour mobility, where AFJ notes that it intends to support companies helping African workers access overseas employment opportunities. 

According to the fund, many African workers remain excluded from these opportunities because of exploitative recruitment systems, expensive placement fees, opaque migration pathways, and inadequate training infrastructure. 

AJF says it wants to support businesses that are building and formalising high-return migration corridors.

The fund is led by Yu, alongside Ben Hyman, founder of Talent Safari, who joins as Operating Partner. 

Senior advisors to AFJ include Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Flutterwave and Samantha Power, former Head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and former US Ambassador to the United Nations.

“African founders have shown they can build category-defining companies. The next decade is about building the ones that put millions of people to work,” Aboyeji said. 

“AJF deserves the attention of every founder and funder serious about jobs and growth on the continent.”

The launch of AJF comes eight months after Yu stepped down from his full-time role at Wasoko, where he helped raise more than $145 million and scale operations across multiple African markets, according to the company.

AFJ will operate as a fund under Renaissance Philanthropy, the nonprofit founded by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg for philanthropic funds.

“The Africa Jobs Fund is exactly the kind of thesis-driven, operator-led philanthropic fund that Renaissance Philanthropy was built to support,” Garg said. 

“Daniel and his team have done the analytical work to identify the highest-return interventions in poverty alleviation in developing economies, and they have the venture-building experience to bet early and activate the founders who can act on that thesis.”