Nigeria reclaimed its position as Africa’s leading destination for startup funding in the first nine months of 2026, attracting $635 million, representing about 2.6 times higher than the $247 million they attracted in the corresponding period of 2025.
The latest funding figures published by ‘Data Africa: The Big Deal’, an African startup funding tracker, indicated that the first three quarters’ foreign investment inflows to the startups represented the country’s strongest performance since 2022.
According to the report, Nigeria also recorded the highest number of startups raising at least $100,000, with 77 ventures attracting funding during the period under review, up 10% from 70 in the first nine months of 2025.
The data reflected that excluding pan-African ventures, Nigeria accounted for 37% of startup funding raised by country-specific ventures in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), its highest share since 2021.
- Advertisement -
A further analysis of the report showed that two entities, namely Moove and Flutterwave led the funding rounds, with Moove, the mobility financing company, raising $250 million, while Flutterwave raised $100 million for the Nigerian startups in the nine-month period.
The e-commerce fintech, Jumia, raised $50 million compared with Yellow Card’s $40 million.
The report’s findings revealed that across the SSA, logistics and transport surpassed the fintech, which had dominated the sector for most of the past seven years, emerging as the largest startup funding category by value in the period.
Specifically, ‘Data Africa: The Big Deal’ disclosed that the logistics and transport startups raised $780 million between January and September 2026, representing 36% of total funding, compared with $760 million, or 35%, for fintech.
The logistics and transport sector’s share in the first three quarters of this year was up from just 7% in the corresponding period of 2025.
The startup funding tracking company attributed the improvement primarily to two companies, Spiro and Moove, which raised $345 million and $250 million, respectively and with their combined $595 million accounting for approximately 76% of the sector’s total funding.
Even then, the report still showed that fintech category retained its lead in the number of funded ventures, with 80 startups raising at least $100,000 during the period.
The report’s data revealed that Egypt remained relatively stable, attracting $445 million in startup funding, an increase of 10% from the corresponding period of 2025, and that Kenya raised $201 million, down 73% year-on-year, while South Africa secured $182 million, representing a 58% decline.
Collectively, the data reflected that Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa continued to dominate African startup financing, accounting for 85% of funding raised by country-specific startups, excluding pan-African ventures, up from 83% in the corresponding period of last year.
