The base is thinning 🔻

While overall totals are holding up, the small cheques that create tomorrow’s pipeline keep getting rarer.

I know we keep coming back to this topic, but it is because it’s the one that determines the ecosystem’s future outcomes. On the surface, start-up funding in Africa is doing pretty well: in the 12 months to March 2026 (Apr 2025–Mar 2026), start-ups in Africa raised $3.3b (exc. exits), including $1.8b in equity and $1.4b in debt, still very much within the pattern we described recently (if anything, towards the top end). But it is increasingly a top-of-the-market story.

Indeed, the long tail is a cause for concern: fewer small equity deals are being signed, and those are the deals that create the next cohort of companies that can raise larger rounds later. It’s not a crash, but a continued erosion. One simple proxy is the share of equity deals that are “small” in the total number of equity rounds announced. In 2021, 40% of disclosed equity deals were in the $100k-$250k range, and 53% in the $100k-$500k range. By 2025, those shares had fallen to 29% and 45% respectively. And while 2026 YTD is still a small sample, the numbers are quite dramatic with only 21% of equity deals in the $100k-$250k range and 31% $100k-$500k. Over the past 12 months, only 129 ventures raised $100k–$500k in equity. A year earlier, it was 148. Under this definition, 129 is the lowest rolling count since we started tracking this metric in 2021.

This reality hides in plain sight because small deals barely move the headline numbers. While making up 45% of the equity deal count in 2025 (164 of 363), $100k-$500k deals represented only ~2% of equity funding ($40m out of $1.9b). So you can lose a lot of early-stage activity while totals stay unaffected, especially if a handful of larger equity rounds (and more debt) keep coming through.

Two important nuances though. First, this is not uniquely African. It maps to what is being observed globally: more money (much more money in the case of AI and the US specifically) concentrated into fewer companies, with deal counts looking down. Second, grants are still doing the work. While they’re sometimes looked down on as an ‘instrument’, they are particularly important when the market isn’t taking the early-stage risk. In our database, 2025 has the largest number of annual $100k+ grants we’ve tracked since 2021 (160 disclosed grants to 154 ventures). However, 2026 so far is running far below last year’s pace: in Q1 2026, we tracked only 15 disclosed $100k+ grants totalling about $4m (versus 27 deals and ~$20m in Q1 2025). If grants are meant to help de-risk innovation and keep the early-stage engine running, those Q1 numbers should worry us a bit.

So, Yes: totals are holding up. But the ecosystem’s future is written in the base. And right now, the base is thinning, in small equity cheques, and (so far this year) in grants too. If this trend continues, Africa might still be producing big rounds in 2026, while silently starving the pipeline that produces the next generation of breakout companies…

If you want to read more on the topic, Gregoire de Padirac’s guest post is a must. All the numbers above are computed from our database. If you want to be able to pull out the underlying time series behind the $100k-$250k and $100k-$500k deal shares, the rolling count, or the grant Q1 comparison, the raw data in a simple Excel format lets you do just that. And more. And sorry to those of you who might have rolled your eyes when you saw we were covering this topic again this week, but this is too important a topic to be ignored. Best, Max

March 2026: Amount is fine. Deal count isn't.

A decent $150m+ month on paper, but the lowest monthly count of ventures raising $100k+ we’ve seen since 2021...

In March 2026, 22 start-ups in Africa announced a total of $151m in funding through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; exc. exits). From an amount perspective, while this is nearly three times what was raised a year ago in March 2025, it’s still well below the monthly average of $266m we’ve observed over the past 12 months (that average is itself made up of serious highs ($554m in July 2025) and lows ($52m in March 2025)). That said, we know month-to-month moves are an unfairly volatile metric. And if we focus on the 12-month rolling picture, it still fits neatly with the pattern we studied in a recent post: in the 12 months to March 2026 (Apr 2025–Mar 2026), start-ups in Africa raised $3.3b (exc. exits), including $1.8b in equity and $1.4b in debt. If anything, these numbers sit towards the top end of the band.

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March was overwhelmingly a debt month: of the $151m raised, $55m was equity and $96m was debt, meaning nearly two thirds of the month’s total came as debt. As usual, a handful of deals concentrated quite a bit of the funding. Sistema.bio led the month with $53m in debt, MNT-Halan followed with another bond issuance worth $40m+ this time, and Zeno rounded out the top three with a $25m Series A. Exits were also busy in the background: we recorded five of them in March (all values undisclosed), with the most talked-about being Orda’s acquisition by Moniepoint.

With March in the books, Q1 2026 (Jan–Mar) comes in a couple millions short of the $600m mark, split almost evenly between equity ($291m) and debt ($304m), across 83 ventures. That’s a very different shape from Q1 2025, when start-ups had raised less ($469m), but the mix was far more equity-led ($397m vs $52m debt, i.e. 89% equity), and 130 ventures had contributed to the total.

There are clearly fewer start-ups raising this year so far, and this is part of an almost uninterrupted downward trend since the heatwave. We’ll come back to this in a future post, but the venture count is the immediate cause for concern: 22 start-ups raised in March, and this is the lowest monthly count we’ve seen since we started tracking $100k+ deals in 2021. In particular, only 130 ventures raised between $100k and $500k in equity in the past 12 months, and this is again the lowest that rolling count has been since at least 2021. Despite the funding winter, a year ago that number was 150+. So while the total amount raised is holding up at a decent level, it increasingly relies on a few larger (debt) tickets, once again raising questions about future prospects if early-stage ventures remain underfunded…

If you want to go beyond the headline chart and numbers, our database lets you pull the full March deal list (and the underlying sources), slice it by country/region, sector, stage and instrument, and benchmark against any month or rolling window since 2019. It also includes an ever growing set of deals shared confidentially by selected investors (so you’re not just reading what made the press). If you don’t have access yet, grab it here with a discount. Ciao! Max

​🔟 things you should know about start-up debt in Africa

Still a bit of a niche by count. But already a force to be reckoned with by value...

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Since the heatwave in particular, debt has emerged as a core feature of the start-up funding landscape in Africa. Debt has its own merits and it would be wrong to somehow oppose it to equity. This is not a competition, but a partnership. Debt and equity investors - and those do both - play very different yet equally important roles in a maturing start-up ecosystem. This week, we dig deeper into our database to see what key trends we could identify on the debt front…

1️⃣. Debt is now a material part of the funding story. Announced debt grew from less than $300m in 2021 to $1.2b in 2025. Over the same period, debt’s share of total disclosed start-up funding (exc. grants & exits) rose from 7% to 38%, making it a meaningful part of the market rather than a niche side-note.

2️⃣. But debt still reaches relatively few ventures. Between 2021 and 2025, 169 start-ups announced a debt round, versus 1,880 that announced equity funding: roughly a 1 to 11 ratio over the period. That gap has narrowed, though: in 2025, the ratio was closer to 1 to 7, with 53 start-ups announcing debt against 363 announcing equity (13%).

3️⃣. Most debt is announced on its own, not alongside equity. In 2025, 87% of debt-raising start-ups announced just debt, as opposed to debt tied up to an equity round. That is up from 75% in 2022-2023, suggesting debt is increasingly being used as a standalone financing tool rather than an add-on to an equity raise.

​​​4️⃣. The typical debt round tends to get bigger. The median disclosed debt round was $2m in 2021, $5.5m in 2022, $3.6m in 2023, $2.1m in 2024, and $5m in 2025. So while the market has clearly matured, it has not done so smoothly: progress has come in jumps, setbacks, and rebounds.

​5️⃣. A handful of mega-deals still define each year. In every year from 2021 to 2025, the single largest debt round represented between 18% and 26% of all disclosed debt raised that year. For instance in 2025, d.light’s $300m facility alone accounted for roughly a quarter of all announced debt, which helps explain why annual totals and medians can swing quite sharply.

6️⃣. Debt is much more concentrated than equity. Since 2019, the top 10 debt raisers (d.light, MNT-Halan, Sun King, M-Kopa, Wave, Moove, Spiro, valU, Planet42 & Burn) have accounted for roughly 66% of all disclosed debt raised, versus just under 25% for the top 10 equity raisers (Opay, MNT-Halan, TymeBank, Flutterwave, Sun King, Interswitch, M-Kopa, Chipper Cash, Andela & Moove), with four companies making both top 10 lists (MNT-Halan, Sun King, M-Kopa & Moove). In most years, the top 10 debt raisers capture 75-80% of the annual total, while for equity the equivalent range is closer to 40-50%.

7️⃣. Energy and Fintech dominate debt. Add Transport & Logistics, and you have almost the whole market. Between 2021 and 2025, Energy + Fintech represented about 60% of debt deals and roughly 83% of total announced debt. With Transport & Logistics, that rises to roughly 76% of debt deals and more than 93% of the total, showing just how concentrated debt remains in a small set of sectors and business models.​​​

8️⃣. ​West Africa often leads by number of debt deals; East Africa often leads by amount of debt raised. West Africa regularly contributes the largest share of debt deals, while East Africa repeatedly captures the largest facilities, especially in the Energy sector. But this is exactly where concentration matters: one or two very large rounds can redraw the regional picture in a single year.

9️⃣. African start-up debt is not one market. It is at least four. The lender base breaks down into crowd/retail platforms (e.g. Lendahand, Bettervest, Trine), DFIs and public institutions (e.g. IFC, BII, DFC), commercial banks (e.g. Standard Bank, CIB, Rand Merchant Bank), and specialist non-bank lenders such as private credit or structured debt funds (e.g. Symbiotics, Lendable, Verdant). Those are not just different capital providers; they are different products, different underwriting logics, and often different sector or geographical preferences (especially for commercial banks).

​🔟. The lender mix is becoming much more institutional. In 2021, crowd and retail lenders still appeared in about 35% of debt deals; by 2025, that figure was down to about 3%. Over the same period, DFIs, banks, and especially specialist non-bank lenders became much more visible, suggesting the market is moving away from smaller platform-led debt and toward more structured institutional financing.

Again, the point is not that debt is overtaking equity. It is that debt is becoming a more important layer of the African start-up funding stack, with its own logic, its own repeat players, and its own patterns. To some extent, it remains a selective instrument, available to a relatively small number of later-stage ventures and heavily skewed toward a few sectors and large borrowers. But it is no longer an exception. It is becoming part of the market’s core plumbing.

Remember, our database lets you do double-click on every announced round on the continent, with country, sector, stage, investor and instrument-level detail. If you want to interrogate the market beyond the weekly headlines, or build your investor outreach plan, that is exactly what it is for. If you’re interested, use this discount code. Unless you want to apply to potentially get 2 years of free access… but you’ll have to do that here by March 27. A bientôt, Max

As flat as the top of Table Mountain 🚠

12-month rolling funding has now been stable for 7 months. Below the heatwave peak, above the winter lows, and structurally more debt-driven.

While it is helpful to follow the evolution of start-up funding on a monthly basis, for most of us who are in it for the long haul, long-term trends are much more telling. This is why this week I wanted to update an analysis I have done in the past, that focuses on 12-month rolling periods, and therefore smoothes out monthly variations and seasonal effects. And something comes out very clearly: start-up funding in Africa has reached a new cruising speed since mid-2025, and it’s held to it very steadily since.

Most of you will already be familiar with the different ‘chapters’ we have seen play out, with funding accelerating at breakneck speed from mid-2021 onwards, peaking in mid-2022 at a staggering ~$6.3b (July 2021-June 2022), then falling through 2023 and reaching a low point of ~$2b two years later (July 2023-June 2024) - still higher that pre-heatwave levels though -, and then back on a more modest growth trajectory.

That’s where the recent plateau comes in: since August 2025, 12-month rolling funding has sat in a pretty tight band around $3.1b (±$90m). That kind of stability is rare since 2020, except for another plateau in late 2022 post-heatwave, before the numbers started to slide further. Over the past few months, not only has funding been stable, but so is the case for the rolling number of ventures clearing meaningful thresholds: the count of ventures raising $1m+ or $10m+ for instance are holding steady around 211 (±5) and 65 (±4). These numbers have actually been relatively flat since as far back as mid-2024, as opposed to dollar amounts. In plain terms, the ecosystem seems to have found a stable run-rate, at least for now.

Another interesting point is what this new normal is made of. Pre-heatwave, the market was overwhelmingly an equity story. Today, debt has become an important pillar of start-up financing on the continent. In the current plateau, debt represents roughly two-fifths of funding (39% ±3%). Since August 2025, 12-month rolling equity funding has been around $1.8b (±$125m) and debt around $1.2b (±$125m). This is the clearest structural change in the data: stability is back, but with different mechanics, and more maturity.

One final comment on the early-stage engine, to insist on a point Grégoire de Padirac made in his guest post back in January. The $100k–$1m layer is certainly thinner in deal volume than it was during the heatwave. But relatively speaking, this is not a “small-deals-only” phenomenon: the contraction in the number of ventures raising $100k–$1m since the heatwave is broadly comparable to the contraction in ventures raising $1m+, at least in relative terms. So the story of the past couple of years is not that the base fell out while the top stayed intact. But if this is truly the new cruising speed, the challenge is clear: can the market keep funding enough new entrants to build a pipe of future larger deals, without needing another heatwave to boost immediate and future growth?

If you need access to the underlying data ready to be sliced by country, sector, stage, or investor, that’s what our Africa: The Big Deal database is for. You can access it here at a discount. Or if you’re a start-up and feeling lucky, apply to join our ‘Data for Founders’ initiative - in partnership with FMO Ventures - for a chance to get free access to the database for the next two years (and more). Have a good day! Max

February 2026: We're back on track 👟

40 ventures raised at least $100k last month and bagged a total of $272m+ in funding, putting the year back on a stronger footing

40 start-ups announced a total of $272m in funding in February 2026 through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; exc. exits) in Africa. From an amount perspective, that is a clear improvement on January’s $174m, and also slightly above the previous 12-month monthly average of $254m. 54% were raised as equity; 45% as debt. The number of start-ups announcing funding also rebounded from January, although it remained a little below the prior 12-month average of 46 per month. But overall, after a muted January, February brought the numbers back to the level of activity we’d grown to expect in 2025.

As usual, the month’s total was driven disproportionately by a relatively small number of larger tickets. Spiro in Benin alone announced $57m in debt across two transactions, while Breadfast in Egypt secured $50m in pre-Series C funding. GoCab in Côte d’Ivoire wasn’t far behind with $45m raised across debt and equity. Also announcing over $20m in February were Terra Industries in Nigeria who topped up their previously announced round with an additional $22m; Enko Education in South Africa who secured $22m in debt; and Lula - also in South Africa - who secured $21m from DFI FMO. In other words, February’s recovery was real but it was also quite concentrated, with these six ventures alone attracting 80% of the funding. Geographically speaking, Egypt ($64m), Benin ($57m), Côte d’Ivoire ($45m) and South Africa ($44m) made up the top four. From a regional point of view, West Africa dominated and attracted more than half of all the funding (53%), followed by Northern (24%) and Southern Africa (21%). What is puzzling is that East Africa - which topped the charts in 2025 with 34% of all the funding - ranks #4 in February with just 3% of the total, and barely more if we look at 2026 YTD (4%). Something we’ll want to keep an eye on…

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With February in the books, 2026 is back ahead of where 2025 stood at the same point. Start-ups in Africa have raised $446m+ in January-February 2026, versus $417m during the same period in 2025. So while January had suggested a slower start to the year, February has effectively put 2026 back on track. Not dramatically ahead, and certainly not enough to settle what kind of year this will be yet, but ahead nonetheless.

Now: over to March! :)... As usual, if you want to run your own analysis, or need data to prepare to raise your next rounds, don’t miss our database which you should really access with this discount code. And actually, if you’re a start-up and haven’t applied to our Data for Founders initiative - in partnership with FMO Ventures -, you’d better apply now as the March 20 deadline is fast approaching...

🚀 Unveiling our 'Data for Founders' initiative

Have a good week! Max