Tramayne Monaghan, chief venture officer at Next176, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2026.
Tramayne Monaghan recalls his time as CFO of Tencent Africa as a baptism by fire.
“Doing finance in a deeply innovative space gives you a real appreciation for what is required to challenge the status quo, to build but to keep really strong guardrails,” he says.
“What I have learned through my career is how to structure governance and innovation in a meaningful way from those early days.”
Those are lessons that he carried over while serving as the Chinese media and entertainment company’s chief innovation officer in Africa for nearly five years. He then went on to lead
then-investment company Transaction Capital’s technology team, before moving to insurance and financial services company Old Mutual’s startup investment arm, Next176, as chief venture officer.
“Doing finance in a deeply innovative space gives you a real appreciation for what is required to challenge the status quo, to build but to keep really strong guardrails”
Next176’s stated aim is, in addition to generating returns, to help what Monaghan calls the “grand audacious goal” of impacting a billion lives in Africa, focusing on segments such as jobs, education, sustainability, debt management and health.
The unit’s role, he says, is to be the Rosetta Stone between Old Mutual and the startup ecosystem, articulating the value of startups to the corporate and showing the value of the corporate to the startups.
Currently in the process of raising its second fund, the unit is focusing on expanding its reach across Africa – buoyed by Old Mutual’s presence in 13 countries on the continent. It also anticipates more exits to follow its first, which came by way of an acquisition by Old Mutual.
Above all, Monaghan wants to see the growth of corporate VC in Africa accelerate and see more corporates jumping in to see the value of what a strong ecosystem can bring.
“ We are happy to be a case study, even for our competitors, because the more corporates do this, the better the ecosystem evolves, and it also allows expediency in innovation in the corporate. We are constantly hitting that drum.”
The Emerging Leaders are mid-career corporate venture professionals who are making an outstanding contribution to their teams and the industry.
See the full list of Emerging Leaders here.
