Lina Kacyem

Lina Kacyem is a professional with almost twenty years of working experience in various sectors of the financial industry: insurance, venture capital, development finance and consulting. She is currently an Investment Manager, leading investments in Francophone Africa at Launch Africa Ventures based between Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) and NYC (USA). She also co-launched the angel network Next Millennia Angels with the mission of investing in Africa to position the continent for exponential growth over the next millenia. Before joining Launch Africa Ventures, Lina was the Managing Director of the Dakar Network Angels, where she facilitated angel investing in African startups, notably around Francophone Africa. Prior to that, she worked as a Consultant for ZS Associates in the pharmaceutical and tech spaces. She also worked in the development space at the DFC’s Mission Transaction Unit, as a Director handling the West and Francophone Africa portfolio where she completed two major transactions of $20M to facilitate lending towards African SMEs. In the Venture Capital space, she worked for Recast Capital, a fund investing in minority emerging fund managers; and for Global Ventures, a Dubai based VC firm investing in the MEA region. She also held multiple leadership positions at GEICO and Travelers. In 2019, she co-launched the Yale Africa Startup Review whose mission is to share stories of ingenuity and innovation to attract interested stakeholders to the African startup ecosystem. She holds an MBA from the Yale School Of Management. She obtained her Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and in Marketing from The Pennsylvania State University. She also holds the CPCU Designation.