Morocco’s startup ecosystem is attracting significant attention, but the headlines often focus on capital from the Gulf and France. Look closer at the deal announcements, however, and a quieter, more strategic trend emerges: pan-African venture capital funds are finally making inroads into the Maghreb.
This month, when Moroccan B2B e-commerce startup Chari raised a $12M Series A, the round was co-led by Tunis-based SPE Capital and Orange Ventures, the VC arm of the French telecoms giant. But buried in the syndicate was a cohort of pan-African investors, including Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV), Madagascar’s Axian Group, and P1 Ventures.
This development is part of a larger structural shift. In recent months, Janngo Capital, an Ivorian fund, invested in Moroccan AI-recruitment startup Jobzyn. This followed a $1M pre-seed round for AI startup ToumAI, which was led by Launch Africa Ventures and included Madica, the Africa-focused investment programme from Flourish Ventures.
For a region historically disconnected from the continent’s main VC hubs in Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town, these deals signal a slow but important integration of North Africa into the wider African tech landscape.
The New African Cohort
The investors planting flags in Morocco are typically pan-African funds with mandates that explicitly include or focus on Francophone Africa, allowing them to bridge the language and network gap that has long deterred their Anglophone-centric peers.
- Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV): The participation of this major fund, which has roots in Nigeria and Japan, in Chari’s $12M round is a significant validation. Chari, a Y Combinator alumnus, is digitising procurement and offering financial services to thousands of small “mom-and-pop” shops.
- Launch Africa Ventures: One of the continent’s most active seed-stage investors, Launch Africa led the $1M round for ToumAI, an AI startup building customer experience solutions for Arabic and African dialects.
- Janngo Capital: The Abidjan-based firm, known for its gender-lens investing, recently backed Jobzyn, an AI-powered recruitment platform. This move highlights a new focus on Morocco from a key Francophone-Africa-focused player.
- LoftyInc Capital: The Nigeria-based firm, an early backer of Flutterwave, announced a new $43M pan-African fund in March 2025 with an explicit focus on Francophone Africa. The fund itself is notably backed by Tunisia’s Anava Fund of Funds, institutionalising the flow of capital across the Sahara. LoftyInc Capital, an early backer of Flutterwave, announced a new $43 million pan-African fund in March 2025 with an explicit focus on Francophone Africa. LoftyInc has already entered the Moroccan market, participating in a recent $3.5 million seed round for cybersecurity startup Nucleon Security. This investment is a direct execution of its strategy, as a significant portion of the new fund is earmarked for North Africa, including Morocco.
Why Morocco? And Why Now?
These African VCs are moving into a market dominated by other players. The Moroccan tech ecosystem is primarily driven by local funds. For instance, Azur Innovation Management recently led a $7.5 million Series A for the fintech super-app ORA Technologies. Other active local investors include Maroc Numeric Fund II (MNF), EmergingTech Ventures, Outlierz Ventures, UM6P Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, Kalys VC, and CDG Invest.
Gulf investors from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also increasingly active. UAE-based Shorooq Partners and Jordan’s Silicon Badia, for example, backed the adtech startup Journify in a $4 million seed round.
Morocco’s appeal is fourfold:
- 52,000 Visitors and Counting: The GITEX Africa Effect: The continental tech event GITEX Africa, first launched in Marrakech in 2023, has rapidly become a major catalyst for the Moroccan tech ecosystem. Its growing influence is clear from the attendance numbers: the inaugural 2023 edition was followed by a 2024 event that drew over 30,000 visitors, and the most recent 2025 edition attracted over 52,000 — a significant 16% year-over-year increase. This platform has afforded investors a clear window into the local market, correlating with a sharp increase in investment activity into Moroccan startups since the event’s inception.
- Political Stability: The monarchy provides a predictable environment compared to its neighbours.
- Market Size: A growing domestic market of 37 million people.
- Gateway Status: It is strategically positioned as a gateway between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The new African investors see this as an opportunity. While Gulf funds may view Morocco as a launchpad into the wider Arabic-speaking MENA region (as with Journify), pan-African VCs see a dual opportunity: a stable North African market and a potential bridgehead for their portfolio companies to straddle different continents (Europe and Africa) or expand south into Francophone West Africa.
Bridging the Sahara Divide
Historically, Africa’s VC scene has been split. The major hubs in Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa operated in a distinct, Anglophone-dominated ecosystem. Funds like Partech and 4DX Ventures, while pan-African, focused their efforts south of the Sahara, or mostly in Egypt.
This “Sahara Divide” was built on practical barriers: different legal systems (civil law in the Maghreb vs. common law in Nigeria/Kenya), separate business networks, and a significant language gap.
That is changing:
- Deliberate Mandates: Funds like Janngo and LoftyInc are increasingly reviewing their investment mandates to cover Francophone Africa, including the Maghreb.
- Market-Specific Expansion: Some large funds are also now targeting the region directly. Partech, which has offices in Dakar and Paris, already holds investments in Morocco (Freterium and Inyad). It was also part of a $13M round for Egyptian fintech Money Fellows, a company with stated plans to expand into the Moroccan market.
- Talent & Valuation: Morocco also offers a compelling value proposition: a deep pool of high-quality engineering talent at a fraction of the cost found in Europe or America. This is a critical advantage for AI and deep tech companies. The recent ban on subcontracting in neighbouring Tunisia has further enhanced Morocco’s attractiveness, positioning it as the premier destination for companies seeking offshore talent domiciliation in North Africa.
A Region of Extremes
The focus on Morocco is sharpened by the near-total or declining absence of venture capital in its immediate neighbours.
- Tunisia: While it boasts Africa’s pioneer Startup Act, a strong deep-tech talent pool and has attracted some pan-African interest (Janngo and LoftyInc have also invested there), economic uncertainty and rigid foreign exchange rules have dampened many investors’ enthusiasm.
- Algeria: While Algeria’s population of 44 million represents a potentially massive market, commercial VCs remain cautious. The primary concern is capital repatriation controls; as one pan-African investor told Launch Base Africa, the fundamental problem is that investors “can’t get money out.” Despite this, the country is home to one of the Maghreb’s largest funding rounds: Yassir, an Algerian “super app,” raised $150 million in a Series B in November 2022. It is worth noting, however, that the company is headquartered in the United States, a structure that likely facilitated this international investment.
- Libya:The ongoing civil conflict and absence of a functioning legal system render conventional VC investment unviable. This makes the recent investment in Mataa a notable exception. The e-commerce and express delivery marketplace secured backing from a group of Libyan business angels, marking a rare appearance in the venture capital landscape.
The Exit Problem Remains
Despite a new influx of capital, investors in the Maghreb — whether from the Gulf, France, or Africa — face the same fundamental challenge: a lack of exit opportunities. While Tunisia’s Expensya and Instadeep have achieved multi-million dollar exits, their operations are multinational, making them exceptions to the rule.
With minimal M&A activity and local stock markets ill-suited for high-growth tech companies, this structural weakness keeps investment tickets small. It forces investors to bet that their startups can expand regionally to become attractive acquisition targets.
For a company like Chari, the exit path isn’t a local IPO; its foray into fintech is positioning it as a major regional player, likely to be acquired by a Gulf conglomerate. The startup possesses the necessary institutional and political capital to succeed.
The new African VCs are making strategic, tentative bets. Their success hinges on whether these Moroccan champions can be the first to break out of their home market and prove that a profitable exit from the Maghreb is possible.
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