Grace Ashiru
The Africa Ecosystem Catalysts Facility, a USD 4M pilot investment facility managed by Village Capital with funding from the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO) and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), has announced its first two investments in Ghana. The Facility is deploying capital into Rivia Clinics, a tech-enabled primary healthcare startup, and VDL Fulfilment, an e-commerce logistics platform built for African SMEs, both based in Accra.
The Facility works in partnership with locally-led Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs), whose proximity to founders and market insight help identify high-potential early-stage companies often overlooked by traditional investors. In Ghana, Reach for Change and Innovation Spark partnered with Village Capital to shape the investment pipeline, ensuring capital is aligned with the realities on the ground.
The Facility’s first investment is in Rivia Clinics, a tech-enabled primary healthcare provider expanding access to affordable, membership-based care for underserved populations in Ghana. Village Capital is investing USD 200K to support the company’s growth.
Rivia operates a platform connecting SMEs and individuals to a network of branded and partner clinics, offering seamless access to both virtual and in-person care through a single membership. By combining digital access with a growing physical clinic network, the company is making primary healthcare more accessible, predictable, and affordable. Since launching in 2024, Rivia has already reached over 50,000 patients through its network and continues to scale an asset-light model that enables rapid expansion without heavy infrastructure investment.
“For too long, healthcare has been built around misaligned incentives – providers, insurers, and patients operating in silos with no one truly accountable to the person who needs care. Rivia Clinics is rewriting that by combining care delivery and employer-health financing into one unified model. The Africa Ecosystem Catalysts Facility’s investment comes at exactly the right moment – enabling us to expand our clinics chain, strengthen our sales efforts, and deepen our virtual care capabilities,” says Isidore Kpotufe, Founder of Rivia Clinics.
The second investment is in VDL Fulfilment, an end-to-end e-commerce logistics platform enabling African SMEs to store, manage, and deliver products more efficiently.
An alumna of RVO’s Orange Corners Ghana and winner of the Orange Corners Innovation Fund (OCIF), VDL provides integrated warehousing, order management, and last-mile delivery services through a proprietary platform, helping businesses reduce operational complexity and scale without heavy upfront investment. Since its launch, the company has processed over USD 3.8M in merchandise value, fulfilled more than 170K orders, and supports over 150 active vendors on its platform.
A USD 150K investment, structured as a blend of a convertible note and milestone-based debt financing, will enable the company to strengthen its warehouse and fulfillment infrastructure, expand its fleet, and develop distributed hubs closer to demand, all of which will increase delivery capacity and reduce costs for the SMEs they serve.
“Access to this type of capital allows us to build at the speed our operations can actually support, not at the speed capital usually demands. In a logistics environment like ours, premature scale creates inefficiencies that compound quickly,” shared Vanessa Omari, CEO at VDL Fulfilment.
Speaking on the Facility’s initial investments and pipeline in Ghana, Heather Matranga, Managing Director of Venture and Investments at Village Capital, said: “Rivia and VDL are strong examples of the businesses emerging across Ghana – founders building practical solutions to real, everyday challenges, from accessing quality healthcare to moving goods more efficiently. What stands out is the impact both companies are already having, driven by their deep understanding of the problems their customers face and the environments they operate in.”
These investments represent the first in a broader series of deployments planned across Ghana, Tanzania, and Nigeria.
