Kenya bounces back and francophone hubs rise as investors tighten their purse strings. Meet the new wave of founders plugging the continent’s infrastructure gaps against the odds. A selective silver lining.

At first glance, 2025 was a highly respectable year for African startup founders, with funding jumping more than 25% over the past 12 months. A total of $4.6bn was raised in 2025. Yet a second look at the ‘2025 Africa Tech Venture Capital Report’ by Partech Africa – one of the continent’s most recognised venture capital (VC) investors, co-directed by Tidjane Dème – calls for caution.

The influx of capital stems largely from a specific segment: debt. This increased by 63% compared with 2024, accounting for $1.6bn. This more cautious funding method guarantees regular returns for creditors but remains poorly suited to early-stage startups (pre-seed and seed), which are particularly capital-intensive.

These younger companies now face far stricter screening from investors. 20 future champions of African tech in 2026 STARTUPCOUNTRYSECTORCREATION DATEFUNDS RAISED ($M)VerascientSouth AfricaAI2023NDChargebyteSouth AfricaEnergy2023NDKhazenlyEgyptLogistics20212.7JournifyMoroccoServices20226CauridorGuineaFintech20193.5MophonesKenyaE-commerce2023NDHoneyCoinKenyaFintech20205.5VunaPayKenyaAgritech20230.5CredableKenyaFintech20210.1AgrailsKenyaAgritech/AI20230.2YoLa FreshMoroccoAgritech20237InyadMoroccoFintech20188Nucleon SecurityMoroccoCybersecurity20193.5PowerlabsNigeriaEnergy20220.6Tanél HealthSenegalHealth20200.6Kera HealtSenegalHealth202310CashiSudanFintech20225MazaoHubTanzaniaAgritech20212 “The data shows a market transformation, with a strong concentration of capital on larger ticket sizes and more mature businesses,” says Maxime Bayen, operating partner at Catalyst Fund. “This is driven by the withdrawal of some early-stage players, a heightened perception of risk, and a growing reliance on public funding or grants at the pre-seed level.

This pushes VCs to favour de-risked profiles rather than feeding the base of the pyramid,” says the expert, who co-founded Africa: The Big Deal, a database tracking the continent’s tech funding. This top-heavy concentration was palpable while compiling our 2026 list of the 20 future champions of African tech. This year, more than ever, the question of startup renewal has come sharply into focus, as evidenced by several metrics, with results that offer revealing insights.

Plugging the infrastructure gap The first takeaway is the enduring strength of fintech models, which now display advanced sophistication – much like Credable. Founded by Nadeem Juma, Jad Abbas, and Michael Tarimo in 2021, the company is already active in three East African countries and relies on an embedded finance (B2B2C) model. This positioning, focused as much on financial infrastructure as on consumer apps, reflects a continental reality: plugging the tech infrastructure gap often takes precedence over direct-to-consumer solutions.

This logic of connecting banks, telecoms operators, and tech platforms is shared by several of our champions this year, including Kenya’s VunaPay and HoneyCoin, and Sudan’s Cashi. The latter was specifically designed in 2022 by entrepreneur Tarneem Saeed to support her marketplace, Alsoug, launched in 2016. This year’s results show fintech is once again highly prized by investors, bouncing back from a surprising dip in our 2025 edition.

The second lesson is the undeniable appeal of agritech, championed by players like YoLa Fresh, MazaoHub, and Agrails, which provides real-time climate data and predictive analytics. These firms offer the dual advantage of combining social impact with massive market volume in a sector struggling to meet ever-rising demand driven by population dynamics. Models built around logistics and supply chains are emerging as another major pillar.

Egypt’s Khazenly, launched in Cairo in 2021 by Mohamed Younes, Osama Aljammali, Mohamed Montasser, and Ahmed Dewidar, managed to raise $2.5m in its first year to industrialise its e-commerce one-stop shop. Finally, healthtech remains a darling of pan-African VCs. Standouts include Tanél Health, cited by several of our respondents, Verascient, and notably Kera Health, an AI-driven e-health solution founded by Moustapha Cissé that raised $10m in June 2025.

Kenya’s comeback Geographically, Kenya is the clear breakout, with five startups making the list this year. It marks a strong return for the Silicon Savannah, which leads the continent in total funding ($1.04bn) according to Partech data. This – at least temporarily – eclipses its peers in the ‘Big Four’ (Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa), the markets most favoured by investors.

Our 2026 list features only two South African representatives and just one from Egypt, a country that hosted a quarter of the 20 startups in our previous edition. Another striking takeaway is the apparent sluggishness of the Nigerian giant. Only one company under five years