After two years of contraction, African tech in 2025 finally turned a corner—but not in the way many expected. This wasn’t a return to the frothy 2021 fundraising environment. Instead, the continent raised $3.24 billion, marking a 45% jump from the previous year, driven by something more fundamental: a shift from consumer apps to infrastructure, from speculation to consolidation, and from hoping for exits to actually achieving them.
We want to reflect on African tech in 2025 in this editorial. Here are the ten stories that defined the year.
1. Canal+ Completes $2 Billion MultiChoice Takeover
When the deal closed in September, it barely made headlines in Silicon Valley. But across Africa, the French media giant’s $2 billion acquisition of South Africa’s MultiChoice Group rewrote the rules of the game. Canal+ now controls a media empire serving over 40 million subscribers across nearly 70 countries—from Lagos to Johannesburg, from Nairobi to Abidjan.
The takeover took nearly two years to navigate South African foreign ownership regulations, a bureaucratic marathon that would have killed most deals. But Canal+ persisted, and the payoff is massive: for the first time, African audiences will be served by a single entertainment powerhouse with both the capital to compete with Netflix and the local knowledge to understand what actually works on the ground. Nollywood executives and South African producers are already calling it the beginning of a new era.
2. African Fintechs Finally Get Their IPO Moment
For years, African founders watched enviously as their Silicon Valley counterparts rang the opening bell. That changed in November when South African fintech Optasia listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange at a $1.4 billion valuation, raising $345 million in the process. Days later, Morocco’s Cash Plus went public on the Casablanca Stock Exchange, pulling in $82.5 million and attracting more than 80,000 retail investors—a groundswell of local participation that surprised even the underwriters.
These weren’t just exits. They were proof that African tech companies could graduate beyond the private markets that had sustained them, into the scrutiny and liquidity of public trading. For founders across the continent, the message resonated: build something real, and the public markets will eventually open their doors.
The narrative had shifted. African tech wasn’t a charity case or an emerging market curiosity. It was infrastructure—real businesses building real value that public markets would actually pay for.
3. Moniepoint Hits Unicorn Status with Kenya Expansion
Nigerian fintech Moniepoint became Africa’s first profitable fintech unicorn in October, closing a $200 million Series C at a billion-dollar valuation. But the real headline was what happened next: Kenya’s competition authorities approved Moniepoint‘s acquisition of a 78% stake in Sumac Microfinance Bank, handing the company instant regulatory access to East Africa’s $67 billion mobile payments market.
The strategic pivot was brilliant. Rather than spending years navigating Kenya’s complex licensing regime, Moniepoint simply bought its way in. Other Nigerian fintechs took notes. Within weeks, at least three major payment companies had hired M&A advisors to scout similar acquisition targets across the region. The playbook had changed: scale through combination, not application forms.
4. The Great M&A Wave Arrives
Consolidation became 2025’s defining trend, with M&A deals surging 69% year-over-year. Cash-strapped startups discovered that combination beat cash burn, and investors encouraged the pragmatism. In June, Nigerian delivery platform Chowdeck acquired Mira, a restaurant point-of-sale startup, in a move that pushed the company beyond logistics into merchant operations. The pattern repeated across sectors—logistics, fintech, healthtech—as founders chose survival through scale over the fantasy of raising another round.
The era of ten identical startups competing in the same vertical was over. The survivors were eating the wounded, and emerging stronger for it.
5. Sun King Opens First Major Manufacturing Plant in Kenya
When Sun King’s gleaming new manufacturing facility opened in Nairobi’s industrial zone in October, it represented more than one company’s expansion. The plant, capable of producing 700,000 solar-powered devices annually—everything from televisions to smartphones—was evidence that African tech companies were finally moving from importing solutions to building them locally.
For years, hardware startups assembled in Shenzhen and shipped to Africa. Sun King flipped the script, bringing production to the continent and keeping more value in-country. The 400 new manufacturing jobs were welcome, but the symbolic victory was even bigger: African tech was graduating from distribution to production.
6. Funding Returns, But It’s Not Really Venture Capital
African startups celebrated as funding hit $3.24 billion, the best year since 2022’s downturn. But look past the headline and a different story emerges: roughly half of those dollars weren’t equity investments at all. They were debt facilities, securitizations, and receivables financing—structured finance deals that treated startups like infrastructure projects rather than moonshots.
Companies like Wave and d.light secured massive debt packages against proven cashflows and collateralized assets. It was capital, and it was desperately needed, but it revealed a two-tier ecosystem: scaled companies accessing cheap debt, and early-stage startups still struggling to raise their first venture rounds. Progress for the winners, but the funding winter continued for everyone else.
7. High-Profile Startups Collapse
Not everyone made it through 2025. In March, Kenyan buy-now-pay-later fintech Lipa Later was placed under administration after investors refused to provide more capital. In February, edtech startup Edukoya shut down despite raising $3.5 million. In July, Nigerian open-finance platform Okra quietly exited after burning through more than $16.5 million.
The failures shared common DNA: unclear business models, slow consumer adoption, and investors who had lost their patience for “trust the process” pitches. The market had hardened. Capital still existed, but only for companies that could demonstrate a clear path to profitability. The participation trophy era of African venture capital was officially over.
8. AI Adoption Goes Pragmatic
African startups deployed generative AI throughout 2025, but the implementations were ruthlessly pragmatic. No metaverse fantasies or sentient chatbot experiments—just cost reduction and efficiency gains. Customer support bots, automated compliance checks, content generation tools that actually saved money.
The healthtech sector led the charge. Startups including Awa Doc, Clafiya, Penda Health, and Koyo Healthtech launched AI-powered triage tools that allowed patients to diagnose symptoms online before seeing a doctor. The technology worked, costs dropped, and adoption followed. African AI in 2025 looked less like Sand Hill Road and more like pragmatic engineering solving real problems.
9. The Tier System Hardens
Investment potential remained heavily concentrated in the Big Four—Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt—which together captured over 80% of venture dollars. Ghana, Rwanda, Tunisia, Senegal, and Morocco showed moderate startup activity but struggled to attract meaningful follow-on investment. The rest of the continent remained largely ignored by institutional capital.
The gap between haves and have-nots widened throughout the year. Founders in Tier 1 markets enjoyed multiple funding options and competitive term sheets. Founders elsewhere often couldn’t get a Zoom call returned. The geographic concentration of African venture capital, always significant, became nearly absolute in 2025.
10. Development Finance Still Dominates
Despite the funding recovery, development finance institutions remained the elephants in every room. The World Bank’s IFC, the European Investment Bank, Germany’s DEG, the Netherlands’ FMO—they showed up in nearly every major deal, providing the de-risking that purely commercial investors still demanded.
African tech in 2025 looked more like infrastructure finance than Silicon Valley-style venture capital. The DFIs brought patient capital and higher risk tolerance, but their involvement also revealed an uncomfortable truth: five years into the continent’s “tech boom,” purely commercial venture capital at scale remained elusive. For all the progress, African startups were still viewed more like emerging market infrastructure projects than high-growth tech companies.
The year’s real story wasn’t about individual mega-rounds or unicorn announcements. It was about an ecosystem maturing past the hype cycle into something more durable: companies building real infrastructure, investors demanding real revenues, and exits proving that African tech can actually return capital.
The party atmosphere of 2021 didn’t return in 2025. Something more sustainable might have taken its place. Whether that’s enough to build the next generation of African tech giants remains an open question heading into 2026.
