Funding for the start-ups in Africa got off on a positive note in 2025 as nearly $300m was raised in January.
According to Africa: The Big Deal!, which monitors activities in the continent’s startup space, on Monday, about 40 firms got $289m in funding.
African start-ups had raised $2.2bn in 2024 in equity, debt, and grants (excluding exits), which was a 25 per cent drop compared to the $2.9bn that were raised on the continent in 2023. A total of 188 ventures raised $1m or more in 2024 (excl. exits). The quartet of Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa attracted 84 per cent of all start-up funding (excluding exits) in Africa in 2024, just like they had in 2023.
In January 2025, start-up fundraising in Africa stood at $289m, raised through $100k+ deals (excl. exits).
“This is nearly 3.5 times the amount that was raised in January 2024 ($85m) and actually the second-best month of January since at least 2019, second only to January 2022, in the heart of the funding heatwave. More than 90 per cent of the funding raised in January was equity ($262m), 4.4 times more than in Jan 2024, and again the second-best month of Jan when it comes to equity fundraising since at least 2019,” part of the report seen by The PUNCH read.
In the past month, startups got 40 $100k+ deals.
The report added, “While this is less than what we registered in 2022, 2023, or 2024, on the positive side, there was a total of 26 $1M+ deals amongst those, more than in Jan 2024 (21), and—you might have guessed already—the second-best month of January in terms of the number of $1m+ deals since at least 2019.
“The four largest deals—alone representing nearly 60 per cent of all the funding raised on the continent last month—were all originating in one of the Big Four, though three out of four have to do with extension to other geographies, within or beyond the continent: PowerGen (Energy) raised $50m+ to establish a scalable platform for distributed renewable energy solutions across Africa; LemFi (Fintech) secured $53m to further expand into Asia and Europe; Insure Tech Naked bagged a $38m Series B to automate and expand its product offering; and Enko Education secured $24m to keep expanding its network of African schools.”
