1. Debt has quietly become the dominant capital form
The loudest conversations in African tech often revolve around equity rounds, valuations, and who led which deals. February’s funding data suggests that focus can be misleading. Of the $340.5m raised across all disclosed deals this month, $236.5m — roughly 69% — came through debt, structured facilities, bonds, or development finance loans. Equity and venture capital accounted for just $104m. Whether this reflects a scarcity of venture capital or a growing preference for traditional debt instruments remains to be seen.
2. Development finance institutions are filling the Series B gap
The so-called Series B gap — the shortage of growth-stage capital between $10m and $50m — has been a well-documented problem in African tech in recent months. February’s data shows who is filling it, at least partially: development finance institutions (DFIs) and multilateral lenders.
FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, provided R340m ($21m) to South Africa’s Lula in local currency. KfW DEG and IFC backed Lupiya’s $11.25m Series A in Zambia. The EBRD and IFC together contributed $23m to Breadfast’s pre-Series C in Egypt. Afreximbank anchored Spiro’s $50m debt facility.
These are not passive co-investors riding behind a VC lead. In several cases, the DFI is the primary or sole capital source. The pattern reflects both the shortage of commercial growth capital and the increasing sophistication of DFIs in structuring instruments — local currency debt, convertible notes, blended finance — that are fit for purpose in volatile currency environments.
3. Local currency financing has moved from niche to strategy
Two deals in February drew specific attention to foreign exchange risk management: Mogo Kenya’s Ksh 800m debt facility and Lula’s R340m FMO injection. In both cases, the companies and their investors explicitly framed the local currency structure as a strategic choice, not a constraint.
For Mogo, which finances motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and smartphones — assets priced and used in Kenyan shillings — the logic is straightforward: dollar-denominated debt creates a currency mismatch against shilling-denominated revenues. The company’s shift to a Ksh 1.5bn bond programme, arranged by Dry Associates Investment Bank, aligns its liabilities with its cash flows.
For Lula, operating in South Africa where the rand has faced sustained pressure, FMO’s local currency facility removes one layer of risk from a fintech that is already absorbing credit risk from small business borrowers. The structure is becoming a template.
4. Egypt leads on deal count, despite macro headwinds
On raw volume of transactions, Egypt produced more deals than any other single country in February: Breadfast (pre-Series C), Flextock (Series A), Tactful AI (pre-Series A), among others. This is increasingly remarkable for a market that has spent the last 18 months managing the consequences of multiple currency devaluations and a challenging macro backdrop.
The durability of Egypt’s deal flow reflects several structural factors: a large talent pool, relatively mature angel and early-stage investor networks, a growing corporate innovation infrastructure, and strong links to the Gulf, where a significant share of Egyptian startup capital originates.
Breadfast’s $50m round is particularly notable. Led by Novastar Ventures through its People and Planet Fund III, the round drew in Mubadala, The Olayan Group, SBI Investment, and Y Combinator among others, suggesting that international appetite for Egyptian consumer tech remains intact despite the headline volatility.
5. South Africa’s capital flows are infrastructure-heavy
South Africa topped the country rankings with $116m raised. The pattern is telling. South Africa’s startup ecosystem continues to generate interesting companies. But the capital volumes flowing to those companies remain modest relative to the country’s economic size. In February, large numbers sit in infrastructure, project finance, and traditional corporate lending.
6. Defense technology has arrived on the continent
The most unexpected development of the month came from Lagos, not a traditional hotbed for dual-use or defense technology. Terra Industries, founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku (22) and Maxwell Maduka (24), closed a $22m extension round led by Lux Capital — just one month after securing an $11.75m initial round led by 8VC. Its total funding now stands at $34m.
The investors behind Terra are not peripheral figures. Lux Capital has backed Anduril and Saildrone. 8VC was founded by Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir. Nova Global, also participating, has a track record in defense-adjacent technology. The participation of Resiliience17 Capital, set up by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, adds a layer of African institutional endorsement.
Terra is positioning itself as Africa’s first vertically integrated defense prime, drawing explicit comparisons to Anduril and Shield AI in its framing. Whether that aspiration is realisable is a question the company will spend the next several years answering. What is clear is that American defense-tech capital has now made an early, aggressive bet on the African market — a category that barely existed two years ago.
7. E-mobility is maturing into a capital-intensive infrastructure sector
February produced distinct e-mobility funding events: Spiro’s $50m Afreximbank facility, Arc Ride’s proposed $5m IFC equity investment in Kenya, GoCab’s $45m combined equity and debt raise in Ivory Coast, and Yongeza Capital’s undisclosed seed round in Uganda.
The spread of structures is instructive. Early-stage e-mobility companies are still raising seed equity (Yongeza). Mid-stage platforms with proven unit economics are accessing blended IFC-style instruments (Arc Ride). Scaled operators with large fleets are tapping pan-African multilateral lenders for working capital and expansion debt (Spiro via Afreximbank). Vehicle-financing platforms are raising mixed equity-debt structures calibrated to asset-heavy business models (GoCab).
The sector has moved well beyond the phase where a pitch deck about battery swapping attracts venture dollars. Investors now want fleet metrics, swap station utilisation rates, battery degradation data, and revenue per unit. The capital is still flowing, but it has become considerably more demanding.
8. Morocco is building a distinct fintech identity
Morocco did not produce the largest deals in February. WafR’s $4m seed round, Geniepot’s $100k, and Charikaty’s $164k together total just over $4.3m. But the character of Morocco’s deals is worth noting separately from the volume.
WafR’s model — turning traditional retail outlets into embedded digital financial hubs — targets a consumer behaviour that is distinctly Moroccan: a large informal retail sector, relatively high smartphone penetration, and a population that is deeply accustomed to transacting through corner shops and neighbourhood stores. LoftyInc Capital’s decision to co-lead, alongside three Moroccan institutional investors, reflects a view that the embedded finance opportunity in francophone North Africa is underappreciated.
Meanwhile, Charikaty’s appearance at a televised investment pitch show — Qui Veut Investir Dans Mon Projet? — and its subsequent $164k raise from local investors points to an angel and early-stage ecosystem that is developing on its own terms, largely outside the mainstream African tech capital circuits.
9. The early-stage funding gap persists
Some of the deals tracked in February involved undisclosed amounts: Yongeza Capital, Kenai, BekyaPay, Fertitude, Phundit, Leya Labs, and Fabconnect.
What the undisclosed deals collectively illustrate is the continued activity at the earliest stages of the ecosystem, where amounts are small, investors are often angels or family offices, and formal disclosure is uncommon. Fertitude, a Lagos-based femtech platform, and Phundit, a Ghanaian financial resilience app, both received undisclosed investments from Nubia Capital — a relatively new Nigerian vehicle making small bets across sectors.
Individually, neither deal would materially shift aggregate funding totals. Taken together, however, they highlight a paradox: early-stage experimentation persists, but the overall volume of seed activity remains thin relative to the ecosystem’s needs. For venture markets, that narrowing base — rather than the headline-grabbing late-stage rounds — may prove more consequential over time.
10. Pan-African ambition is the stated goal across the board — but geography still concentrates capital
Virtually every company that raised capital in February articulated a pan-African expansion agenda. Spiro operates across seven countries. GoCab is targeting West Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Lupiya is expanding from Zambia into broader Southern and East Africa. Points Africa is launching in Ghana before moving into Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya. Nairagram already processes transactions across 37 African countries.
Yet the actual distribution of capital remains heavily concentrated. Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya — the four markets that have historically dominated African tech investment — collectively account for the majority of disclosed deal value and virtually all large equity rounds. The remaining 50-plus African markets compete for the residual.
The gap between stated pan-African ambition and actual capital geography is not new, but it is widening in one respect: the companies most likely to operate genuinely across borders are infrastructure platforms — payments rails, e-mobility networks, logistics operators — rather than consumer apps or B2B SaaS. That distinction matters for how investors should think about category exposure versus geographic exposure when they describe their African portfolios.
Notes: All currency conversions use approximate February 2026 rates.