Nairobi, Jan. 28 -- Norwegian State-owned fund Norfund is angling for small-ticket deals as it looks to deepen its appetite for businesses in Kenya and the rest of Africa, which are scouting to raise capital away from commercial bank financing.

The fund said that it will trim its transaction ticket size to about Sh645 million ($5 million) from the standard Sh2.6 billion ($20 million) to unlock opportunities for a wider pool of Kenya's budding medium-sized businesses to access growth capital.

"Ticket size is a conundrum in the sense that when we invest close to one billion US dollars every year, it's hard to deploy it if you do in ticket sizes of one, two or three million US dollars because you will end up having far too many companies t...