The Nigerian venture capital community has entered a new front. Back home, the economy is biting and startups are teetering on the edge of survival, inflation soaring as high as it can be and founders forming circles to discuss how to wage wars against their startups’ dwindling fortunes and the surging tides of currency volatility — it shed over 110% in two years alone. But, known to them or not, something ominous is looming. The very local capital that flooded the startup scene around 2020–2021 is seeking offshore safety.

This week, Ingressive Capital, long considered one of the few pro-local holdouts, joined the wave. The Lagos-based fund, run by Maya Horgan Famodu, crossed the desert into Egypt — this year’s most-funded African market so far — to lead a $600,000 extension round in Nowlun, a digital freight startup simplifying full-container shipping in MENA. It’s a $2.3 million seed round altogether, but the headline isn’t just the cash. It’s the direction. North.

Nowlun helps move breakbulk cargo with real-time tracking and less headache — Egyptian enough in identity, but increasingly pan-regional in ambition. That echoes the funders’ shift too. Ingressive’s move isn’t isolated. It’s a breadcrumb in a larger trail being blazed by Nigerian VCs tiptoeing, if not sprinting, out of a homeland where costs are doubling and exits are vanishing.

Ventures Platform, another pillar of Nigeria’s early-stage scene, is already halfway out the door — or halfway in another one. In Dakar, at a cocktail event that brought together the crème of Francophone tech, the firm signaled what’s to come. A new hire. Hady Barry. Formerly of Taptap Send and Zipline. Now the face of Ventures Platform’s Francophone Africa push.

“Capital must follow talent,” Barry said, standing under soft lights and louder expectations. “And they are everywhere in Africa.”

And she wasn’t bluffing. Ventures Platform has been busy. There was Chargel, the Senegalese trucking startup. Then Maad, a logistics-tech play reimagining FMCG distribution to Africa’s informal shops — bagging $3.2 million last year. Both deals led or co-led by Nigerian firms. Both far outside home soil. The strategy is deliberate. IFC backed Ventures Platform’s second fund with $6 million. Other DFIs like Proparco and BII joined in. With that kind of LP stack, staying local isn’t just limiting — it’s negligent.

LoftyInc is not sitting still either. In March, it closed its $43 million third fund at warp speed, drawing capital from sovereign wealth funds in Egypt and Tunisia, plus Europe’s family offices and African HNIs. A long way from its $1.1 million first fund backed entirely by Nigerian high-net-worth individuals. That fund, small as it was, returned 5.7x cash thanks to early bets on Flutterwave and Reliance Health. But those days feel like relics now.

LoftyInc’s cheque into Egypt’s Widebot this March — a $3 million pre-Series A round for an Arabic LLM startup — says it all. The fund is following its LPs. Into North Africa. Into AI. Into relevance.

Meanwhile, Oui Capital, one of the few Nigerian outfits with a bonafide 50x return under its belt (Moniepoint, $150K turned $8 million), went hunting in Francophone waters too. In February, it led a $3.5 million round into Cauridor, an Ivory Coast-based fintech trying to untangle Africa’s knotted cross-border payment rails. Oui had been circling the region for a while. Now it’s in.

But here’s the rub: Nigerian VCs may still be found active in home market, but they’re hardly leading the charge. A review of major 2025 deals shows them at the table, but rarely at the head:

• Arnergy raised $15 million. Nigerian firms like CardinalStone and All On joined. But the round was dominated by Breakthrough Energy (US), BII (UK), and Norfund (Norway).
• OmniRetail pulled in $20 million. Nigerian investors filled the sheet — Timon, Aruwa, Ventures Platform, even Flour Mills of Nigeria. Still, Norfund led.
• Raenest got $11 million. Ventures Platform wrote a cheque. So did Norrsken22, QED (US), and P1 Ventures (Egypt). The foreign hand was heavy.
• LemFi closed $53 million. As per press release, not a Nigerian VC was in sight. Highland Europe (UK), Left Lane (US), Endeavor Catalyst, Palm Drive Capital — all global.

The money is coming in, sure. But not from home. And not for long.

Nigeria’s macro signals aren’t helping. The naira has collapsed past ₦1,600 to the dollar on the streets — more than double what it was officially trading just two years ago. Electricity tariffs, fuel, food — up. Confidence — down. The IMF now pegs Nigeria as Africa’s fourth-largest economy, below Egypt, Algeria, and South Africa.

In 2024, Egypt and Kenya alone soaked up 75% of all startup funding in Q3 — $272 million and $201 million respectively. Nigeria? It barely made a dent, ranking third overall for that year. Unprecedented. Except last-minute mega rounds from Moove and PalmPay, the taps, for this year, have been mostly dry.

Still, the ecosystem limps on. Founders are finding ways — patching burn rates, dodging shutdowns, and closing bridge rounds in tight corners. But the early-stage landscape is quietly starving. Many of the local VCs who once sprayed $50K–$100K cheques across Lagos have moved their wallets offshore or nowhere at all. And Y Combinator, once a surefire pipeline for Nigerian validation and global capital, has all but shut the door.

“It’s a long thing,” one investor told Launch Base Africa. “There used to be a time when $100K cheques were everywhere. Now? You have to squint to find one.”

It’s not all doom. But it is dislocation. The builders remain. So do the ideas. But Nigerian capital, once the pride of its own scene, is boarding flights, chasing new markets and surer returns. Not because it wants to abandon home — but because home, for now, is harder to love.

The money hasn’t stopped moving. It’s just not moving here.