Nigerian start-ups have emerged as the third highest recipients of funding on the African continent in the first five months of 2025.

This was disclosed in the latest Africa: The Big Deal, a platform that tracks funding to African start-ups.

At the end of May, African start-ups had raised over $1bn, which compares favourably to 2024 ($750m over the same period), for instance. Also encouraging is the fact that start-ups in Africa have raised $2.5bn over the past 12 months (June 2024-May 2025), the highest total for 12 months since early last year.

A geographical spread revealed that Egyptian start-ups came top with ($332m+, 31 per cent), followed by South Africa ($273m+, 26 per cent), then Nigeria ($162m+, 15 per cent) and Kenya ($132m+, 12 per cent).

The report read, “In line with previous periods, 84 per cent of the funding has therefore been going to the ‘Big Four’. We registered some level of activity (at least one $100k+ deal) in 20 markets.

From a sectorial point of view, fintech start-ups attracted almost half of the funding ($484m+, 46 per cent), followed by health tech ventures ($149m+, 14 per cent), boosted by hearX’s $100m in April, and energy start-ups ($106m+, 10 per cent).

“Overall, 77 per cent of the announced funding was raised as equity ($810m+) and 13 per cent as debt. The rest was grants ($24m) and a bond ($50m), courtesy of Tasaheel, part of MNT-Halan, responsible for Egypt’s largest ever corporate bond issuance in May.”

According to the co-founder, Max Giacomelli revealed that compared to last year, it had taken start-ups on the continent until mid-July to get to over $1bn.

He said, “So, 2025 is about seven weeks ahead of 2024. It is also comparable to 2021, though not as impressive as 2023 and 2022 (remember: the $1b milestone was reached in just seven weeks back then!). We’re now hoping this means the ecosystem is on track to at least top the 2024 final numbers, $2.2bn in total.

“One last thing. If you follow start-up investments in Africa, you’ll know the name on everybody’s lips these days is Nigerian mobility start-up Moove, which is rumoured to be raising $300m on its way to unicorn status. It seems like it is now more a question of when Moove will announce this round, rather than if.”

In May, a total of 36 start-ups announced funding over $100k+ (exc. exits), slightly lower than in the past few months. On the positive side, though, it means the median deal value was higher.

 No less than seven ventures raised over $10m last month. Egypt is led by others in the Big Four: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.