African startups and growth-stage companies raised at least $340.5m across 29 disclosed deals in February 2026 — a month that produced a defense-tech breakthrough in Lagos, a $50m electric vehicle milestone in Cotonou, and a clutch of development finance injections stretching from Lusaka to Cape Town.

The aggregate number is notable. More notable is its composition. Of the $340.5m raised, roughly $236m — 69% — came through debt facilities, structured loans, project finance, and development bank instruments. Equity and venture capital accounted for $104m, or just under a third. The balance between venture and structured finance in African tech has been shifting for several years. February’s data makes the direction unmistakeable.

The aggregate number is notable. More notable is its composition. Debt accounted for 69% of all capital raised — a figure that reframes the conventional narrative about African venture activity.

Egypt delivers on volume despite macro pressures

Egypt produced several funding events in February — the highest deal count of any single country — despite operating through a period of sustained currency pressure that has complicated the calculations of both founders and investors.

The largest was Breadfast, the quick-commerce and logistics platform, which closed a $50m pre-Series C led by Novastar Ventures through its People and Planet Fund III. The round included Mubadala, The Olayan Group, SBI Investment, Asia Africa Investment & Consulting, Y Combinator, the IFC, the EBRD, and 4DX Ventures. The company is targeting a full Series C in the first half of 2026, which it says will precede a potential global IPO.

Flextock, an e-commerce enablement platform with ambitions across the wider MENA region, raised $12.6m in a Series A led by TLcom Capital. The round drew a notably diverse investor group including Conjunction Capital, Capria Ventures, Access Bridge Ventures, Foundation Ventures, BY Venture Partners, JIMCO, Alter Global, and MSA Capital — spanning Nigeria, the UAE, Mauritius, Monaco, the United States, and China.

February 2026: Top Funding Value by Country (Disclosed Deals)

Development finance institutions anchor growth-stage rounds

The absence of a deep commercial pool of growth-stage capital in African tech — the persistent gap between $10m and $50m — has been a structural problem for years. February’s data shows who is filling it, at least partially, and how.

FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, provided R340m ($21m) to Lula, formerly known as Lulalend, in local South African rand — a structure designed specifically to eliminate currency mismatch risk for a fintech whose borrowers and revenues are entirely rand-denominated. For Lula, which is building a lending-as-a-service and neobanking platform for small and medium enterprises, the FMO facility provides growth capital without the equity dilution or dollar exposure that characterise most comparable-sized rounds.

In Zambia, Lupiya’s $11.25m Series A was led by IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund and included both INOKS Capital and German development institution KfW DEG. The round took nearly two years to close, according to CEO Evelyn Chilomo Kaingu — a timeline that reflects the difficulty of raising growth capital in markets that international commercial VCs rarely visit.

IFC also made a proposed equity investment of up to $5m in Arc Ride, the Nairobi-based electric two-wheeler platform, as part of a larger Series A alongside Mirova, British International Investment, Musashi Seimitsu Industry, and Novastar Ventures. The blended structure — combining DFI equity, strategic industrial capital from Japan, and climate-focused fund capital — is increasingly the template for e-mobility financing in East Africa.

Nigerian capital exports across the continent

Nigerian investors appeared in more transactions across more countries than any other national investor base in February. LoftyInc Capital co-led WafR’s seed round in Morocco. Alitheia IDF Fund led Lupiya’s Series A in Zambia. Ingressive Capital co-invested in Fabconnect in Egypt.Nubia Capital invested in Ghana. Among others.

The pattern is consistent with a trend that has been building for several months now: Nigeria has become the continent’s most active exporter of venture capital, even as its domestic startup ecosystem continues to navigate currency volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and a challenging fundraising environment for founders.

Japan and the Gulf deepen African exposure

Two geographies made their presence felt in February in ways that are worth noting separately from the standard Atlantic capital flows.

Japanese capital appeared in key transactions. Novastar Ventures led Breadfast’s pre-Series C and participated in Arc Ride’s Series A. SBI Investment and Asia Africa Investment & Consulting both joined the Breadfast round. The concentration of Japanese capital in two Egyptian and Kenyan deals in a single month is not a pattern that has been prominent historically, and may reflect a broadening of Novastar’s mandate and growing Japanese institutional interest in African consumer and climate platforms.

Gulf capital, primarily from Abu Dhabi, concentrated on Egypt. Mubadala and The Olayan Group backed Breadfast. BY Venture Partners and Access Bridge Ventures, both Abu Dhabi-based, joined Flextock’s Series A alongside Dubai’s Conjunction Capital. The Gulf-Egypt investment corridor — which strengthened markedly after Egypt’s 2022 and 2023 currency crises, when Gulf sovereign and family office capital provided a crucial stabilising role — continues to deepen.

Smaller deals point to a deepening early-stage layer

Beyond the headline transactions, February produced a cluster of deals that collectively sketch the texture of the African startup market at its earliest stages.

Ollo Africa in Togo raised $1.8m to digitise tontines — rotating savings and credit associations — through its Ohana Africa platform, building on an existing partnership with Ecobank and a BCEAO licence. Eyone Medical in Senegal secured an additional $1.7m from Oyass Capital, the investment vehicle backed by Senegal’s sovereign wealth fund FONSIS, to advance the country’s state-led digital health record initiative. WafR in Morocco closed a $4m oversubscribed seed round to turn retail outlets into embedded financial hubs. Points Africa in Ghana raised $2m from VestedWorld to build the country’s first shared loyalty network.

Morocco’s Charikaty raised approximately $164k from two individual investors after appearing on the televised pitch show Qui Veut Investir Dans Mon Projet?, while Geniepot, a performance-based influencer marketing platform, raised $100k from undisclosed private backers. These are not transformative amounts, but they indicate that angel and early-stage activity continues in markets — Morocco, Togo, Senegal — that institutional trackers tend to overlook. Notwithstanding, pre-seed funding rounds continue to be rare on the continent at the moment.

What February’s data says — and doesn’t say

The $340.5m total is a snapshot of disclosed transactions in a single month. It excludes undisclosed deals, it does not capture the full pipeline of deals that were in progress but not announced, and it reflects the timing irregularities of disclosure rather than the actual pace of capital deployment.

What it does reflect clearly is a capital market in structural transition. The dominance of debt over equity — 69% to 31% — is not incidental. It reflects companies that have outgrown seed-stage equity but face a shallow pool of growth-stage VC, and are therefore turning to DFIs, local banks, multilateral lenders, and structured credit facilities to fill the gap. That transition has implications for founders, who must now manage real debt obligations rather than just equity dilution; for investors, who must understand credit structures and covenant terms as well as equity return profiles; and for the broader narrative about African tech, which has been framed almost entirely around venture capital even as the capital mix has been diversifying for several years.

The geographic spread of February’s deals — from Lusaka to Cotonou, from Casablanca to Lagos — also resists the historical tendency to compress the African tech story into four markets. Benin, Zambia, Cameroon, Togo, and Senegal all produced meaningful deals this month. Whether that breadth becomes a durable pattern or reverts to concentration in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa will be one of the defining questions for the market over the next 18 months.

Notes:
Figures cover disclosed deals only. Breadfast figure adjusted to $27m to exclude previously recorded IFC and EBRD tranches.