About

Mbwana Alliy is the founder and managing partner at Savannah Fund, an Africa focused Technology Venture Capital fund  seed investments in e-commerce, gaming, education technology and social networking.

He is passionate about product development and launching new ventures in technology with an application to emerging and frontier markets. He is an experienced Product Manager within consumer web, enterprise Software & SaaS. He is originally from Tanzania and has lived and worked in 3 continents (USA, Europe and Africa). He has a Bachelor's Engineering degree from Bristol University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate school of Business.

Savannah Fund

As of 2019, he has overseen 30 investments in Africa in 7 countries (Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana). These companies have generated over 400  full time jobs and raised over $60 Million in venture financing. Savannah Fund is headquartered in Mauritius with Offices in Tanzania and Kenya and satellite offices in Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, Cape Town  and Lagos.

Investing and Global Tech Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Mbwana stared invested as an Associate and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for i/o ventures, a mentor based venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley where he assists with seed and early stage startup that are incubated as part of an accelerator program, he contributes in sourcing new deals and helping out in a variety of functions for the incubated startups inc. business development, product development, strategy and customer insights.

Teaching / Training

In his work in building technology ecosystems and bridges between he has co-taught classes and spoken about Africa technology, entrepreneurship and venture capital at University of Cape Town, University College London and Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has also teaches at the VC unlocked program with 500Startups and at Draper University of Heroes.