Africa’s technology ecosystem closed 2025 with a funding rebound driven overwhelmingly by financial technology, reinforcing long-standing concentration patterns across sectors, countries, and even company-level recipients.
Data from SOTIA show that while total funding recovered to $3.42 billion in 2025, capital flowed unevenly, by sector, by market, and increasingly by financing structure.
Fintech dominated Africa’s tech funding landscape in 2025, attracting $1.37 billion, by far the largest share across all sectors. This single sector drew more capital than the next two combined: Energy & Water, which raised $857 million, and Logistics & Transport, which secured $398 million.
Beyond these, funding dropped sharply. Healthcare attracted $185 million, Services $115 million, Agriculture and Food $89 million, and Education & Jobs $87 million. Housing accounted for $82 million, Retail $74 million, DeepTech $73 million, Telecoms, Media & Entertainment $56 million, and Waste Management $35 million.
When combined, four sectors directly tied to living standards, Healthcare, Education, Housing, and Agriculture, raised a total of $443 million. That sum represents just 32% of the capital invested in Fintech alone. The funding distribution placed transaction infrastructure at more than three times the value of sectors tied to food, health, shelter, and education.
Nigeria at the Centre of Capital Flows
Nigeria remained Africa’s largest tech funding destination, both in 2025 and across the longer funding cycle. Between 2019 and 2025, Nigerian startups raised $5.07 billion, the highest on the continent.
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In 2025 alone, total reported tech funding in Nigeria stood at $438 million. However, this capital was highly concentrated. Just six companies absorbed $310 million, accounting for 70.8% of the total.
Moniepoint and LagRide led the field, each raising $100 million. LemFi followed with $53 million, while Kredete raised $22 million, OmniBiz $20 million, and Mopo $15 million. Hundreds of other Nigerian startups shared the remaining 29.2% of available funding.
Across Africa, tech funding between 2019 and 2025 totaled $20.15 billion. Four countries, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, accounted for $16.23 billion of that amount, representing 80.5% of all capital raised on the continent.
After Nigeria’s $5.07 billion, Kenya followed with $4.21 billion, South Africa with $3.64 billion, and Egypt with $3.31 billion. The remaining eight countries in the top 12 collectively raised far smaller amounts: Senegal ($565 million), Morocco ($358 million), Tanzania ($296 million), Tunisia ($219 million), Algeria ($195 million), Ivory Coast ($132 million), DR Congo ($114 million), and Cameroon ($43 million).
Outside the Big Four, the rest of Africa raised a combined $3.92 billion over the seven-year period—less than Nigeria alone. The figures show that Africa’s tech funding narrative is largely defined by a small group of markets.
Debt Takes a Larger Share of Funding
The composition of funding also shifted significantly. In 2019, Africa raised $1.38 billion in total funding, with just $57 million coming from debt. By 2021, total funding surged to $4.45 billion, while debt funding stood at $296 million, about $6 for every $100 raised.
By 2025, total funding reached $3.42 billion, but debt accounted for $1.08 billion of that figure. This meant that $31 of every $100 raised came in the form of loans rather than equity.
The trend accelerated after 2022, when debt funding rose to $754 million out of $4.65 billion total. Although headline funding numbers remained substantial in subsequent years, a growing share of capital was money that startups are required to repay.
The 2025 data show a continent where funding is concentrated in Fintech, clustered in a handful of countries, dominated by a small number of companies, and increasingly structured as debt. Nigeria sits at the centre of this ecosystem, leading Africa in cumulative funding while mirroring the same concentration patterns seen across the continent.
By: James Odunayo
