African technology startups raised at least 1.21 billion dollars across 151 disclosed deals in the first half of 2026, according to Launch Base Africa’s tabulation published this week, crossing the billion-dollar mid-year mark for the third year running.
The headline suggests stability. The composition does not. Disclosed dollar volume fell roughly 17 per cent from the 1.45 billion dollars raised in the same period of 2025. Debt has displaced equity as the fastest-growing instrument, and in May fully 77 per cent of all capital raised came as debt. The median deal size, the number that describes what a typical founder actually secured, nearly halved. A note of caution on the aggregate figures: BusinessDay’s own tally puts the half-year total closer to 1.5 billion dollars across fewer deals, a reminder that African funding data varies materially by methodology.
One transaction dominated everything. Spiro, the electric motorcycle and battery-swapping company, closed a 270 million dollar equity round in June backed by NewTrails Capital, an affiliate of Chinese smartphone maker Transsion, accounting for 65 per cent of the month’s disclosed volume and, combined with earlier rounds, 327 million dollars for the half.
Capital is concentrating in asset-heavy, infrastructure-style businesses backed by strategic foreign investors, while the seed-stage pipeline that produces the next generation of founders thins out. Techmoonshot reported seed rounds at a five-year low in the first quarter, with women-led startups again taking under 10 per cent of funding. Egypt has also overtaken Nigeria in total capital raised by some counts. The ecosystem is maturing, the optimists say. It is also narrowing, and those are not the same thing.
What to watch: Whether second-half mega-deals continue to mask a shrinking base, and whether Nigerian policy stability, repeatedly cited by investors as the missing ingredient, survives the 2027 pre-election cycle.