Two IPOs for the price of one! 🔥🔥

November was a pretty (below?) average month. It was also quite an extraordinary one.

Start-ups in Africa have announced $162m in funding in Nov 2025 (exc. exits), most of which (79%) was raised as equity. This is neither a particularly good or bad month: this is the 5th month in terms of total funding raised in 2025 so far, and the figure is somewhat comparable to Nov 2024 ($181m), though much below Nov 2023 ($267m) levels. In total, 32 ventures across the continent raised $100k or more, including 16 who raised $1m+, of which 6 raised $10m+: SolarSaver (South Africa, energy, $60m), nextProtein (Tunisia, agritech, $21m), SolarX (West Africa, energy, €15m), Omnisient (South Africa, fintech, $12.5m), Lula (South Africa, fintech, $10m), and SwiftVEE (South Africa, agritech, $10m).

But for the real big news this month, you had to look elsewhere. Indeed, not just one but two start-ups IPO’ed on the continent this November. This is a pretty extraordinary event as the last IPOs dated back to pre-pandemic times (Jumia and Fawry in 2019). In South Africa, fintech Optasia listed on the Jo’burg Stock Exchange on November 4, raising $345m in the process, at a market cap of $1.4b. On the opposite side of the continent, Moroccan fintech Cash Plus raised $82.5m through its IPO on the Casablanca Stock Exchange on November 25, at a $550m valuation.

Now we’ve entered the final final stretch of 2025, the numbers continue to look very good overall: so far $2.8b have been raised by start-ups on the continent (exc. exits), nearly 50% more than at the same time last year. The amount raised in equity and the number of ventures raising $1m or more are also on the up. We’ve established since the beginning of October that start-up in Africa have already raised more in 2025 than in 2024. The question now is whether they can also top the 2023 numbers. If we compare Jan-Nov 2025 to Jan-Nov 2023, the numbers are shockingly similar: $2.81b (inc. $1.64 in equity) and 196 start-ups raising at least $1m in 2025 so far vs. $2.84b (inc. $1.62 in equity) and 195 start-ups raising at least $1m in Jan-Nov 2023. Now for 2025 to beat 2023, start-ups need to raise at least $172m in December, which seems achievable as the monthly average in 2025 so far has been around $250m, and start-ups have always raised more than $172m in December since 2021… except in 2023…

All the deals mentioned above - and so many more - have been recorded in our database which you can access with this discount code. This is now the final stretch until the end of the year, and it will soon be time for our annual analysis extravaganza… More on that soon! Oh, and if you’re in Cape Town for the great annual VC migration and haven’t yet met with Maxime, make sure you get in touch before he flies back. A bientôt. Max