The image of a lone migrant worker wiring money home once a month is giving way to something more complex. A new report from Zepz, the payments group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, shows that 70% of senders now support multiple recipients and more than one in eight send money to multiple countries, reflecting a fundamental shift in how cross-border payments are used across Africa.

The findings, based on five years of data from more than 5.5 million unique senders, challenge the traditional view of remittances as emergency support. Almost half of all transfers are under USD 50.00, and nearly three-quarters fall below USD 100.00. They are regular, recurring transfers that have become as routine as paying a utility bill.

Adults aged 25 to 34 now represent the largest sender group, accounting for 30% of all active users. Having grown up with mobile banking, this generation expects cross-border finance to match the speed and simplicity of the apps they use daily. Women have also reached near parity, accounting for 45.9% of transactions and representing 49.9% of senders aged 35 to 44. The gap between what men and women send per transfer has more than halved in five years.

The numbers are reshaping how African economies think about diaspora finance. Sub-Saharan Africa received USD 54 B in officially recorded remittances in 2023, according to the World Bank, surpassing foreign direct investment and official development assistance in many countries. Nigeria receives roughly USD 19-20 B annually, while Kenya and Ghana each receive about USD 4-5 B. In smaller economies like The Gambia and Lesotho, remittances exceed 20% of GDP.

But the infrastructure that moves this money is changing. Traditional remittance fees to Africa have historically ranged from 7% to 12% per transaction. Fintech platforms including Sendwave, LemFi and Grey have compressed costs to between 1% and 3%, delivering funds directly to mobile wallets used by millions of Africans without bank accounts. LemFi now handles more than USD 1 B in monthly payment volume.

Zepz, which transferred USD 17 B for customers in 2025, is pushing further into digital infrastructure. In October 2025, it launched the Sendwave Wallet, built on the Solana blockchain, allowing customers to hold and send USDC stablecoins across more than 100 countries. The wallet lets users store value in digital dollars rather than converting immediately to local currency, a feature that matters in regions facing currency volatility.

The company has partnered with Fireblocks to scale stablecoin settlement and with TRM Labs for blockchain intelligence to manage financial crime risk. In January 2026, Zepz acquired a credit product from Pomelo, extending into lending and cards.

Governments are taking notice. Nigeria’s Central Bank is targeting USD 1 B in monthly diaspora remittances by the end of 2026, up from more than USD 600 M currently. The bank has removed regulatory bottlenecks for international money transfer operators and adopted a “free entry and free exit” foreign exchange approach. Kenya’s central bank, meanwhile, has revised its 2026 remittance forecast down to USD 5.11 B, citing pressure from the Middle East conflict and a new 15% VAT on transfers in Saudi Arabia.

The shift is also generational. Older remitters, those aged 55 and over, send an average of 36.8 transfers a year, more than three per month. But it is the younger cohort entering the market that are shaping its future, bringing expectations of speed, transparency and integration with the digital financial tools they already use.

One commercial transporter who lives in Lagos says he hasn’t had to visit a mechanic for repairs since he took his commercial tricycle (locally known as keke) with persistent engine problems to a service centre run by a fledgling startup known as Swap that ripped out the old piece of junk and replaced the engine with an electric motor.

That’s according to a recent report by TechCabal, which revealed that Swap converted it for free. Now, twice a day, he rides to a battery swapping station in Magodo, swaps a dead battery for a charged one in under two minutes, and gets back to work.

He’s one of just over 300 keke drivers in Lagos who have made the switch, according to Swap, which also claims more than 100,000 tricycles are on a waitlist. That gap signals the state of Nigeria’s embryonic conversion landscape.

Across the country, a patchwork of startups is trying to do something that sounds simple on paper and turns out to be brutally complicated in practice. They are taking fossil fuel engines out of three-wheelers, motorcycles and minibuses and replacing them with electric motors; keeping the body and changing the heart, so to speak.

The economics make sense. Petrol prices in Nigeria have climbed from around NGN 185.00 (USD 0.13) per litre before the subsidy removal in mid-2023 to around NGN 1.3 K (almost a dollar) as of today.

For commercial tricycle riders who buy fuel every single day, the shock was immediate. Swap reports operating cost reductions of 30 to 45 percent for converted tricycles, driven by lower energy costs and the complete elimination of engine maintenance. A converted tricycle running on batteries can generate up to NGN 16 K (11.87) in profit after about 14 trips, with a battery swap costing roughly NGN 3 K (USD 2.23).

But the gap between 300 conversions and a 100,000-vehicle waitlist is where the real puzzle lies.

The conversion playbook

Ecowaka, founded in 2024 by Prince Ojeabulu, offers both brand-new electric tricycles from NGN 2.6 M and conversion solutions for existing petrol-powered kekes from NGN 2.3 M. In March 2025, the company partnered with SiAECOSYS, a global leader in rear axle and powertrain solutions, to advance electric retrofit systems for tricycles. The collaboration combines SiAECOSYS’s engineering expertise with Ecowaka’s local insights to create scalable solutions for high-usage urban transport.

In May 2025, Ecowaka and climate-finance firm Rivy unveiled a flexible financing model using Nigeria’s growing Buy Now, Pay Later market, projected to reach USD 2.61 B by 2030. The partnership began with a pilot deployment of five electric vehicles.

“We are thrilled to partner with Rivy to make electric mobility more accessible,” Ojeabulu said. “By working with Rivy, we are opening new opportunities for drivers, fleet owners, business operators and cooperatives to embrace electric vehicles without financial strain.”

Mataji Express has taken a different route. The company partnered with the National Automotive Design and Development Council to convert petrol-powered tricycles to electric. The converted tricycles operate using five 12-volt, 20-amp batteries generating 1.2 kilowatts of power. Charging costs approximately NGN 270.00 (USD 0.20) to NGN 275.00 under Nigeria’s Band A electricity tariff and provides a travel range of up to 90 kilometres.

Dan Iliya, Mataji Express coordinator, said the motivation was simple. “We import and assemble for now, and we have been licensed by NADDC to import and assemble electric vehicles in Nigeria. We have signed an MOU with our foreign partners to do this with about 40% local content.”

The company has already converted 18 tricycles and is seeking NADDC’s evaluation. Conversion currently costs NGN 1.6 M (USD 1.186 K) per tricycle, but Iliya expects the price to drop as the company increases local production.

Qore, backed by Sterling Bank, is approaching the problem at scale. Launched with Nigeria’s first publicly available EV charging station in Lagos, Qore offers purchase and financing of electric vehicles, conversion of fossil-fuel-powered engines, battery-swapping services and more. Sterling Bank CEO Abubakar Suleiman called the launch “a significant milestone” in powering Nigeria’s transportation sector with renewable energy.

“Qore will revolutionise the very idea of how we power movement by providing clean, sustainable and cost-effective options,” Suleiman said.

The bus problem

For larger vehicles, the economics shift. Phoenix Renewables, founded by Mustapha Gajibo in Maiduguri, started by converting petrol-powered minibuses into solar-powered electric vehicles. Gajibo dropped out of university in his third year to run the company. His first project was converting internal-combustion engines of commonly used vehicles: seven-seat minibuses and motorised tricycles.

The company now maintains a fleet of a dozen electric minibuses that can cover 150 kilometres on a charge and cost about USD 1.50 to power to full capacity. Gajibo and his cofounder designed a 60-kilowatt-hour solar-powered charging station in Maiduguri. In 2021, they introduced a 12-seat bus built from locally sourced materials with a range of 212 kilometres, chargeable in 35 minutes via an integrated solar system. In a recent test run, the buses transported 35,000 passengers in Maiduguri in one month.

State and local governments are paying attention. In early 2022, the governor of Borno State awarded Gajibo NGN 20 M ( for research and development, plus 15,000 square metres of land for a factory. The federal government has expressed interest in USD 14.8 K) having his company build electric patrol vehicles for the police and armed forces.

But Gajibo’s ambition to roll out 500 units across eight Nigerian cities faces the same constraint that limits every conversion startup in the country.

The infrastructure trap

Electricity is a major constraint. At Swap’s station in Ikorodu, a fast-growing town on Lagos’s northeastern outskirts, the station had been without electricity since January 2026. To charge batteries, the station runs two diesel generators that barely stop. The station serves 150 drivers and charges between 90 and 100 batteries.

To keep batteries available, Swap buys diesel in bulk. At the current retail price of NGN 1.75 K naira per litre, that comes to roughly NGN 487.5 K a day just to keep the batteries charged. Over a 30-day month, that runs about NGN 14.6 M to 19.5 M, reports TechCabal.

It’s a bit of an irony that startups are converting petrol engines to electric motors, then burning diesel to charge the batteries that replace the petrol.

Nigeria’s grid is perennially unreliable. Band A electricity tariffs exist on paper, but in practice, power outages are routine. The startups know this. They are building battery-swapping networks precisely to sidestep the grid. Swap stations exchange a depleted battery for a charged one in under five minutes. VoltTrac Africa, which launched an electric mobility ecosystem in Kano in July 2026, is building solar-powered photovoltaic carport charging infrastructure. Ecowaka’s vehicles offer a five-minute battery swap and 45-minute station charging.

But solar requires sun, batteries require charging, and charging requires power. Until the grid stabilises, the conversion economy seems likely to run on diesel as much as it runs on electricity.

The numbers behind the shift

Nigeria has set ambitious targets. The Energy Transition Plan commits to electric vehicles constituting 60% of the total market by 2050 and 100% by 2060. The government aims to produce 30% of the electric vehicles used in the country locally. NADDC has unveiled national occupational standards for the conversion, calibration and maintenance of electric vehicles.

But the on-the-ground numbers tell a different story. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 electric vehicles are on Nigeria’s roads as of 2025. Swap has converted just over 300. Ecowaka launched with a pilot of five vehicles. Phoenix Renewables maintains a fleet of a dozen minibuses.

The gap between ambition and reality is a reflection of the scale of the problem. Nigeria has millions of fossil fuel vehicles on its roads. Converting them one by one is painstaking work; each conversion requires a kit, a technician, a battery, a charging point and a driver willing to trust a new technology.

The startups are not waiting for the government to solve the infrastructure problem but are building their own. Swap is positioning its swap stations to serve other EV operators, embedding itself as foundational infrastructure for Nigeria’s broader electrification effort. Ecowaka is building charging and battery-swap stations designed to minimise downtime. Phoenix Renewables is designing solar-powered charging stations.

The conversion economy looks more retrofit than revolution, happening vehicle by vehicle, station by station, driver by driver. It is slow, expensive and dependent on diesel generators in places where the grid has failed. But it is also the only game in town for commercial riders like the one from earlier who has not visited a mechanic since his keke went electric, and for whom it is already working.

Feature Image Credit: DW

In East Africa, a logistics company had the money, having raised more capital than its direct competitor. Yet, it haemorrhaged clients. Not on price, as it turns out, but on reliability. The competitor, operating on thinner margins, simply routed its trucks better, managed working capital with tighter discipline, and hired more selectively.

“No amount of additional capital could fix a scheduling and last-mile execution problem,” says Nico Christoforou, General Partner at Lighthouse Capital, an operator-led private equity firm currently raising USD 50 M for its inaugural fund, as it pushes to combine growth capital with hands-on operational expertise to help businesses scale sustainably.

That moment changed how he views the African market. For two decades, Christoforou operated under “a naïve assumption that capital liquidity was as easily accessible in the rest of Africa as it was in his South African investment banking days.” He learned the hard way that it isn’t. Banks in the region prefer lending to large corporates and governments. The small and medium-sized businesses that actually drive employment are left to fend for themselves.

But Christoforou now operates under a somewhat counterintuitive philosophy based on the conviction that while funding is scarce, the deeper constraint is operational rot. “We mistakenly assumed our money alone would be the differentiator,” he admits. “It wasn’t.”

The old private equity playbook—load up on debt, slash costs, and flip the asset—is dying in Africa, he tells WT. Christoforou argues it is not just ineffective but also reckless. Currency volatility alone can erase leverage-driven returns. He points to the grim math of a 30% to 40% currency drop in a single year, which has sunk otherwise sound businesses that took on hard-currency debt against local-currency revenue. Beyond that, the infrastructure for exits, such as IPOs, strategic trade sales, or secondary buyouts at scale, simply does not exist in most African markets.

“Investors who still show up assuming they can financially engineer their way to a 3x return in five years, without contributing to the operational work, are increasingly the ones stuck holding underperforming assets they can’t exit,” he says.

What works now is boring, he says, suggesting route planning, cash conversion cycles, and governance upgrades.

***

Christoforou tells the story of a fintech founder processing millions of dollars in transactions with a team of just eight people and no institutional backing. When asked what kept him going, the founder did not talk about market size or total addressable revenue. He talked about his mother. About proving that the school fees she paid when she had nothing to spare had been worth it. For Christoforou, that personal stake is a more reliable indicator of success than a polished pitch deck.

He looks for founders who can explain their business model in five minutes to a stranger. He wants to see a leadership team that can politely disagree with the founder in a room. “A business that only functions when the founder is present is not an investable business; it’s a job with a boss,” he says.

The red flags are equally bare. He walks away from founders who attribute every past failure to external macro factors without acknowledging their own missteps. Evasiveness about numbers during due diligence is an immediate deal-breaker. “They will very likely be even more evasive after,” he notes.

One of the most persistent misconceptions Christoforou encounters is the idea that “Africa” is a single market. He still gets asked to comment on “African risk” as if a consumer goods company in Nairobi shares a regulatory environment with a digital services firm in South Africa. They do not.

Kenya’s capital markets look nothing like Nigeria’s, and both look nothing like the francophone West African monetary union. International investors who apply a flat “Africa risk premium” to every deal either overprice viable opportunities out of existence or underprice the real, country-specific hazards, he warns.

***

Christoforou’s advice to founders is brutally practical: build your governance infrastructure before you need it. The way he sees it, founders who wait until due diligence to formalise their books and board structures are negotiating from a position of weakness. “Every gap discovered during diligence becomes leverage for the investor to reprice or add protective terms,” he warns.

He advises founders to walk into a capital raise with audit-ready financials and a functioning board, even an informal advisory one, because institutional capital rewards businesses that look institutional-ready before the money arrives, not after.

As for the future, Christoforou is not chasing flashy consumer apps. He is looking at the “boring” middle layer of fintech—card processing, identity verification, and B2B payment rails for informal trade. He also sees structural tailwinds in healthcare distribution and climate-linked agribusiness, where development finance institutions and commercial equity are increasingly co-investing in the same deals. It is a blended capital stack where the return case and the development case genuinely overlap.

But his underlying message is lucid. He asserts that in a market where capital is expensive, exits are unpredictable, and regulations shift overnight, the investor who survives is not the one with the deepest pockets but the one who knows how to fix a broken supply chain.

“Investing is about people,” Christoforou says. “Their dreams, their ambitions, and their desire to build something that outlasts them. The investors who understand that tend to make better decisions than the ones treating Africa as an asset class to be modelled rather than a place to be understood.”

Africa’s fintech champions are preparing for a landmark moment. By the end of 2026, as many as four of the continent’s largest digital financial services companies could be publicly traded. Yet only one of them is listing at home.

OPay, the Nigerian payments platform backed by SoftBank, has hired Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase for a US initial public offering targeting a USD 4 B valuation. PalmPay, its Nigerian rival backed by Transsion and MediaTek, is preparing for a Hong Kong IPO that could raise about USD 200 M at a valuation above USD 1 B. Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, has chosen the London Stock Exchange for a listing expected to value the business at roughly USD 10 B. All three are targeting listings between September and November this year.

The outlier is MNT-Halan, the Egyptian fintech unicorn, which is planning an IPO on the Egyptian Exchange with an expected valuation of between USD 900 M and USD 1 B. It is working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes. That makes it the only one of the four choosing a local bourse.

The contrast raises a question that should worry policymakers across the continent. Why are Africa’s most successful fintech companies, built on African consumers and African transaction volumes, taking their equity stories to New York, London and Hong Kong instead of Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg?

The answer lies in a combination of structural barriers that African exchanges have yet to overcome. The Nigerian Exchange has recorded zero startup IPOs as high-growth firms founded on local innovation have other ideas. A survey found that 76.5% of Nigeria-funded startups hold dollar capital, making exchange rate instability a critical factor in listing decisions. Companies generating revenue in naira but seeking dollar-denominated exits face a currency mismatch that local markets cannot easily resolve.

Liquidity is another obstacle. African stock exchanges face low market depth and limited participation, which constrains their role in capital mobilisation. The NGX, for instance, does not have the liquidity to support a major fintech listing. Private valuations, meanwhile, are often disconnected from what public markets will pay. For a company like OPay targeting USD 4 B, the gap between what global investors might offer and what the NGX could support is substantial.

Governance requirements also play a role. The NGX requires cumulative pre-tax profits of NGN 600 M (~USD 440 K) over one to three fiscal years. For fintechs that have prioritised scale and market share over near-term profitability, this presents a significant hurdle.

Adesoji Solanke, head of fintech investment banking origination at Absa Securities UK, has noted that listing locally can offer advantages such as familiarity with local investors and less stringent listing requirements. But for companies with global ambitions and dollar-denominated capital structures, the pull of deeper pools of capital, higher valuations and more established regulatory frameworks for technology firms has proven stronger.

Other experts have argued that foreign listings often shift valuation and that major fintech listings on the NGX could attract new categories of investors. The argument is persuasive. But it has not been enough to keep OPay, PalmPay or Airtel Money at home.

The irony is that these companies are not abandoning Africa but rather doubling down across the continent. OPay serves more than 50 million users and processes over USD 12 B in monthly transactions. PalmPay has more than 35 million registered users and became profitable in 2025. Airtel Money serves more than 54 million customers across 14 African markets. Their growth has been driven by African demand. Their IPOs will be powered by foreign capital.

MNT-Halan’s decision to list in Cairo offers a potential template. If successful, it could demonstrate that local exchanges can host fintech unicorns. But one listing hardly solves the underlying problems of currency risk, liquidity constraints and governance frameworks.

The consequence is that African investors, including the millions of ordinary people who use these platforms every day, may not get the chance to own a piece of them as the wealth being created in Africa’s digital economy is increasingly realised on foreign exchanges.

Nigerian crypto startup, Busha, went live with Signal this month, a licensed prediction market platform where users can trade on outcomes across sports, crypto, politics, culture, and economics. Luno, a UK-headquartered crypto exchange with a significant African footprint, launched its own structured Crypto Prediction Market product in Nigeria and South Africa in March, allowing users to bet on whether Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Dogecoin and XRP will finish above or below a target price within 24 hours. Both moves come as the broader crypto industry grapples with the emerging reality that prediction markets are eating into the revenue that exchanges have long derived from spot trading.

It’s the latest sign that prediction markets, a type of trading once confined to specialist forums and political betting sites that allows people to stake on just about anything (from major real-world events to random niche interests), are gaining ground in the continent’s economic heavyweights, where native prediction markets upstarts like Bayse Markets (formerly Gowagr) have also taken root.

As evidence of this emerging picture, global research firm Bernstein cut its 2026 crypto trading revenue estimate for trading giant Robinhood by 49% in July, citing weaker-than-expected industry volumes in the first half of the year. At the same time, the firm projected that Robinhood would generate roughly USD 150 M in prediction market revenue in the second quarter, the first period in which that figure would surpass its crypto trading revenue. Robinhood later reported USD 156 M from event contracts against USD 100 M from crypto trading, which fell 38% year-over-year.

In keeping with the trend, Binance integrated prediction markets into its wallet in April via Predict.fun on BNB Smart Chain. Coinbase rolled out prediction markets to all U.S. customers in January through a partnership with Kalshi. Gemini and DraftKings have also moved into the space. Monthly trading volume across prediction platforms surged from under USD 100 M two years ago to more than USD 20 B. Kalshi alone generated over USD 148 B in trading volume during 2026, representing 85.5% of its lifetime volume. Polymarket’s monthly volume climbed from about USD 1.2 B in 2025 to more than USD 20 B in early 2026.

African exchanges are sensing new opportunity amid a lull in their native offerings. Crypto trading volumes have softened across the board, and prediction markets offer a new revenue stream with lower regulatory friction than traditional derivatives. Luno’s product is structured as a peer-to-peer market where users bet against each other using USDC, with the exchange earning buy and sell fees ranging from 0.03% to 3%. Busha’s Signal is licensed by the Lagos State Lottery and Gaming Authority, a regulatory pathway that avoids the uncertainty surrounding crypto spot trading in Nigeria.

“Prediction Markets are a natural evolution of how our customers already engage with cryptocurrency,” Ayotunde Alabi, Luno Nigeria country manager, noted. “Many of our customers closely follow price movements, form views on where markets are headed, and look for structured ways to act on that knowledge”.

Busha CEO Michael Adeyeri framed Signal as an extension of how sports fans already engage with the game. “Millions of sports fans already make predictions every week, who wins the league, who scores first or which team gets knocked out,” he said. “Signal gives those predictions a place to evolve in real time, creating a picture of how fans collectively see the game unfolding”.

The broader implication is that prediction markets are no longer a niche curiosity. Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani argue that broker-dealers, incumbent exchanges and crypto platforms are competing for a fee pool worth more than USD 70 B across prediction markets, perpetual futures, tokenised equities and compute-linked contracts. The firm expects prediction market revenue to grow at a 64% compound annual rate through 2028, reaching USD 1.7 B.

The bet is that prediction markets can offset declining trading revenue for African crypto exchanges while keeping users within their ecosystems. Luno’s product is the first step in a broader derivatives strategy that includes perpetuals and futures later this year. Busha’s Signal reflects a similar ambition to expand “beyond digital asset trading into new forms of market participation,” according to the company.

Whether prediction markets will eventually overtake crypto trading as the dominant revenue driver for African exchanges remains an open question. But it is clear that as one category declines and another surges, exchanges are repositioning themselves not as crypto platforms but as broader financial marketplaces.

Feature Image Credit: Coin Bureau

Two years ago, the idea that South Africans would pay for just about anything with a flick of their finger seemed like something out of a fantasy novel. A ring that never needs charging, works with any tap-to-pay terminal, and lets one leave their wallet and phone at home was the kind of pitch that would have been politely dismissed at a fintech meetup.

That ring is now on thousands of fingers across the country, and VezoPay, the startup behind it, has gone on a charm offensive to get the banks to play ball, and while it’s had some luck with some, several hold out. The startup now faces a tricky test to change that.

VezoPay has gone live with Investec and Absa, taking its roster of banking partners to four in under a year. A fifth major retail bank is expected to follow before the end of 2026. FNB and RMB Private Bank came on board in October last year. The company, founded by Jake Pinkus and Lawrence Baker, launched its first rings in July 2024.

VezoPay claims a waiting list of about 35,000 people whose banks are not yet supported. A large chunk of them are customers of an unnamed major retail bank due to launch later this year. It is a clear sign of demand, but also a constraint the company cannot control.

The founders say the bottleneck is not manufacturing or technology but bank onboarding. Each institution runs its own internal governance and approval process, followed by a separate South African Reserve Bank sign-off. FNB’s approval took roughly nine months; Investec’s took about four. And the process has gotten harder, not easier.

Banks are now asking for penetration and stress testing and, in some cases, live international transactions to demonstrate that funds can be traced end to end.

Investec’s rollout offered the clearest sign of demand. The bank ran a discount campaign for private clients, and VezoPay recorded hundreds of sales in the first few days, skewed unusually towards the premium gold models. That suggests the early adopters are not just tech enthusiasts but people who see the ring as a status symbol.

The product line-up now includes three families: the X, a ceramic ring; the Classic, in stainless steel; and the gold Signature, which has been reworked from 21-carat to 18-carat after buyers complained it caught between their fingers. Prices range from ZAR 2,999 for the ceramic X-Ring Slim to ZAR 9,250 for the gold Signature.

Beyond South Africa

VezoPay’s shareholder register tells its own story. Naspers South Africa CEO Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa invested early through the Three Birds group. PayFast founder Jonathan Smit came in as investor and adviser in early 2025. The most recent round brought in two former managing directors of listed cybersecurity firm Mimecast. The Three Birds investment is now carried at a multiple of roughly 10 times its original value.

Beyond South Africa, two banks in Mauritius are testing the product, with beta programmes under way in three other African markets. VezoPay says its relationships with Visa and Mastercard have opened doors to issuers elsewhere on the continent.

The fundamental question is whether VezoPay can convert its 35,000-person waiting list into actual revenue before the next wave of wearable payment competitors arrives. Apple has already launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in South Africa. Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay already support Investec cards. The window for a standalone payment ring to establish itself as the default wearable payment method may not stay open indefinitely.

Artificial intelligence is now implicated in 55% of reported cybercrimes across Africa, according to a recent INTERPOL report. Cyber-related financial losses have more than doubled since 2024, jumping from USD 192 M to USD 484 M. The number of confirmed victims rose from 35,000 to 87,000 over the same period.

The 40-page African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, based on survey data from 36 African countries, suggests cybercrime has evolved from isolated incidents into an industrialised, borderless ecosystem. AI is automating every stage of an attack, from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion.

In 2025, South Africa accounted for 92% of all ransomware detections recorded by TrendAI, one of INTERPOL’s partners. The country also registered 213,523 distributed denial-of-service attacks and accounted for 70% of business email compromise detections. Nigeria recorded 5,822 ransomware detections, reflecting its dual role as both an origin and target of cybercrime. Cabo Verde recorded nearly 17,000 ransomware detections, the second highest in Africa.

Perhaps most concerning is the rise of synthetic identity fraud. Criminals are now combining genuine personal information with fabricated data to create entirely new identities capable of bypassing biometric verification systems. These AI-generated personas have been used to open bank accounts, secure mobile loans and register SIM cards under false names. The report identifies the absence of real-time data sharing between banks, telecoms and law enforcement as a dangerous blind spot that criminals are actively exploiting.

Digital sextortion and online harassment, often facilitated by AI-generated deepfakes, remained pervasive, with approximately 600,000 sextortion detections recorded. Business email compromise schemes have grown dramatically more sophisticated, with AI used to generate highly convincing email correspondence that mimics executive tone and internal jargon with near-perfect fidelity. Africa-based threat actors are now targeting victims in Europe and North America using infrastructure spread across multiple jurisdictions.

Neal Jetton, Director of INTERPOL’s Cybercrime unit, said: “Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region. AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion”.

The response, however, remains fragmented. Cybercrime legislation across the continent is inconsistent, and AI readiness in law enforcement agencies is alarmingly low. In 2025, 17 countries enacted or amended cybercrime legislation, but the gap between digital adoption and cyber resilience continues to widen. With more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers recorded in 2025, Africa’s digital transformation is expanding rapidly, but security frameworks are not keeping pace.

Four high-impact operations coordinated by INTERPOL – Serengeti 2.0, Contender 3.0, Sentinel and Red Card 2.0 – collectively led to more than 1,500 arrests and the recovery of over USD 100 M. But these successes highlight the scale of the problem rather than its solution. The industrialisation of cybercrime, powered by AI, is outpacing the capacity of African law enforcement to respond.

The report calls for standardised digital forensic capabilities, enhanced cross-border cooperation, investment in AI literacy among law enforcement officers and formal public-private partnerships. But the fundamental asymmetry remains as criminals deploy AI at machine speed while the institutions meant to stop them are still figuring out how to use it.

Two years ago, Jumia was in trouble. The stock was cratering, and investors were fleeing as the narrative that African e-commerce was destined to follow the Chinese or Indian playbook had started to look like wishful thinking. The company had burned through billions chasing growth, and the market had run out of patience.

Then something shifted. The company stopped chasing gross merchandise volume at any cost and started protecting margins. As it became more disciplined about take rates and cost structure, the numbers started to improve.

This week, Jumia made headlines with somewhat surprising news that it has secured USD 50 M in fresh equity from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and its largest shareholder, Axian Group. The company also reported Q2 revenue of USD 52 M, up 14% year-over-year, with gross profit climbing 28% to USD 30.7 M. Its adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed 36% to USD 8.7 M.

The fresh capital injection comes on the back of Jumia finally calling time on chasing unprofitable gross merchandise volume growth and demonstrating it can grow while making each transaction more economically attractive. CEO Francis Dufay said the company deliberately chose to protect its margins and unit economics rather than chase GMV at the expense of profitability. The IFC’s USD 25 M cheque provides external validation of the turnaround thesis.

But there is a more uncomfortable interpretation that while the turnaround may be improving, Jumia still needs outside capital to survive long enough to prove it.

Jumia burned USD 11.8 M in operating cash during Q2. Its liquidity fell by USD 14.3 M during the quarter, dropping to USD 48.3 M at the end of June, down from USD 62.6 M at the end of March. That means the company is still consuming cash while trying to reach its profitability target.

The bear case is that the USD 50 M raise signals that Jumia is relying on outside capital to get to the point where the business model can sustain itself. Investors are buying about 9.1 million new American Depositary Shares at USD 5.52 each, a 7.7% discount to the last close. Existing shareholders are paying for the turnaround through dilution as well as waiting for profitability.

The reality probably sits between the two narratives. This is a positive financing event attached to a still-unproven turnaround. Previously, Jumia had the classic African e-commerce problem: push GMV, subsidise customers, maintain logistics infrastructure, burn cash, raise more money, repeat. The numbers now suggest management is becoming more disciplined about take rates, gross profit, cost structure and cash burn.

But USD 50 M sounds large until measured against the burn. At roughly USD 12 M of operating cash burn per quarter, USD 50 M does not provide an enormous amount of runway, and that is before considering working-capital movements, capex and other cash requirements.

Jumia’s stated trajectory targets Q4 2026 adjusted EBITDA breakeven and full-year profitability in 2027. The Q2 numbers suggest Jumia the company has a chance, but the real question is whether Jumia can reach positive free cash flow before this new capital gets materially depleted.

If the answer is yes, this USD 50 M could eventually look like the capital that bridged Jumia from structurally loss-making e-commerce company to a sustainable African marketplace. If the answer is no, today’s raise will look more like another capital injection into a business that has repeatedly struggled to make e-commerce economics work at scale.

Morocco’s electric vehicle market is heating up. Fully electric car registrations nearly doubled in the first seven months of 2026, jumping 99% to 1,213 units. Electrified vehicles now account for 17% of new passenger car sales, up from 10.5% a year earlier.

The government wants 2,500 public charging points by year-end. But this is hamstrung by the reality that about 600 public stations currently exist, with fast chargers—the kind that make long-distance travel viable—still scarce.

Enter watt.ma, Morocco’s first comprehensive EV charging network platform built by a startup, WATTSC, that launched its Charge Point Management System (CPMS) this week. But the catch is that the company isn’t building chargers, but rather, the software for those who do.

The platform lets charging operators, site owners and fleet managers monitor stations, set tariffs, process payments and track revenue through a single interface. Built on the open OCPP 1.6J standard, it works with hardware from different manufacturers, meaning a hotel or shopping centre isn’t locked into one supplier. It also integrates local payment systems, a feature that sounds mundane but matters in a market where international payment rails don’t always fit.

“The challenge of electric mobility is not just about installing charging stations,” said Prince Marfo, a watt.ma spokesperson. “Our focus now is expanding adoption and helping charging operators, businesses and fleet owners build sustainable charging networks,” he told investors.

The startup has backing that lends credibility. It was selected for GreenUp Morocco, an incubation initiative backed by the Ministry of Energy Transition and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. It also participated in the African Youth Climate Hub, the only Moroccan startup in its cohort.

The operator gap

The logic is that as more EVs hit Moroccan roads, more charging stations will be needed. And as more stations get installed, someone has to manage them. Watt.ma is betting that the operator layer—the software that turns a physical charger into a revenue-generating asset—is where value will be captured.

But there’s a tension here that’s worth watching. Morocco’s charging infrastructure remains embryonic. Fast-charging stations cost between MAD 250 K (~USD 27 K) and MAD 400 K (USD 43 K) to install, by some estimates, compared to about MAD 25 K (~USD 2.7 K) for a slow charger. Private sector players like Afriquia and TotalEnergies are moving in, but deployment remains fragmented. BYD’s vice-president recently warned that with only 600 public charging stations, Morocco is slowing down its own electric ambitions.

The platform doesn’t solve the hardware gap. It doesn’t install chargers where none exist. It doesn’t address the fact that vast territories lack reliable charging solutions. What it does is prepare the ground for when, and if, the network scales.

A bet on scale that hasn’t arrived yet

The platform-first model—SaaS fees and revenue-sharing with partners—only works if there’s enough charging activity to generate revenue. With just over 1,200 fully electric cars on the road in the first half of 2026, that’s a small pool. The broader electrified category (including hybrids) is larger at nearly 23,000 units, but hybrids don’t need charging networks the way pure EVs do.

Morocco has set ambitious targets: 60% of automotive exports to be electric by 2030, and a battery gigafactory is in the works, both of which show the industrial vision is clear. But infrastructure lags behind policy, and software platforms like watt.ma are essentially building the operating system for a network that doesn’t fully exist yet.

watt.ma is a solution that is, for now, looking for a problem that’s still emerging. That Morocco needs charging management software is a given. Whether the charging network will grow fast enough to make that software commercially viable before the startup runs out of runway is the conundrum.

By Ian Lessem, Managing Partner at HAVAÍC

African Venture Capital (VC) has entered a new era. The exuberance of the 2021 funding boom has given way to a more disciplined investment environment, where sustainable growth, operational excellence, and credible paths to liquidity matter more than headline valuations. 

While some see this as a slowdown, we believe it marks the maturation of African VC. The question is no longer how quickly startups can raise capital, but how effectively they use it to build competitive businesses and create lasting value. 

The African funding boom

Let’s wind the clock back to 2021 for a moment. For nine months, starting in July of that year, African VC was pulling in an average of USD 600 M each month. Due to an over-supply of capital in global markets that found its way to frontier markets like Africa, our continent’s startups were now racking up enormous funding rounds and over-inflated valuations. 

By August 2022, monthly VC funding had dropped to USD 240 M. By the end of 2022, with rising global inflation, higher interest rates, and tighter monetary policy, this had brought the funding boom to an abrupt end.

Viewed against our funding projections, the 2021–2022 boom stands out as a clear anomaly rather than a new baseline for African VC.

At the time, venture valuations in much of Africa had become disconnected from plausible growth and exit outcomes. And while the optimism was infectious, valuations were far exceeding the market’s capacity to generate returns. 

In Kenya, for instance, startups attracted roughly USD 400 M in venture funding during 2021. Assuming investors acquired 10% to 20% equity stakes, those investments implied enterprise valuations of around USD 3 B in aggregate.

Even at the lower end of typical venture return expectations, investors would have needed exit opportunities worth approximately USD 15 B in total. Yet Kenya’s largest listed company was valued at just USD 8 B, while the next ten largest listed companies were worth less than USD 6 B combined. Who were the potential buyers? From a domestic buyer perspective, a profitable exit was unlikely.

The pattern

The world’s leading venture ecosystems have all experienced periods of exuberant capital inflows followed by valuation corrections that ultimately produced more disciplined investors and stronger, more competitive businesses.

The United States offers perhaps the best-known example of this cycle. The dot-com boom of the late 1990s drove venture investment to unprecedented levels as valuations became increasingly disconnected from business fundamentals. When the bubble burst, thousands of startups disappeared, and venture funding declined dramatically.

But the correction marked a turning point: investors became more disciplined, placing greater emphasis on sustainable and competitive business models, sound fundamentals, and long-term value creation. The result was a stronger venture ecosystem that went on to produce many of the world’s most successful technology companies.

China experienced a similar cycle. Between 2014 and 2020, abundant capital fuelled soaring valuations before regulatory crackdowns and a global funding slowdown triggered a sharp correction. As valuations reset, investors shifted from growth-at-all-costs to businesses with stronger fundamentals and clearer paths to profitability.

India followed a similar trajectory. Record funding during 2020 to 2021 gave way to a sharp correction from 2022 as capital became more expensive. Investors responded by prioritising sustainable growth, stronger unit economics, and capital efficiency.

Africa is now following the same trend. The correction may have been painful, but history suggests it is also a sign that the ecosystem is entering its next phase of maturity.

The correction

After the peak, funding fell sharply as valuations and growth assumptions were tested against the depth of local markets and the underlying economics of individual businesses. Investors were chasing growth at all costs, which typically meant buying topline revenue by lowering prices or overspending to acquire customers. The result is often fast growth but unsustainable unit economics in the long run. 

The correction triggered a sharp change in investor sentiment. And the ecosystem slowly shifted from headline valuations to prioritising startups that are poised to deliver steady, sustainable growth and generate liquidity. 

The market has stabilised with more measured valuations and appropriately sized funding rounds. As for exits, the trend is pointing in the right direction. 

Two recent studies by the SA SME Fund, Endeavor South Africa, and SAVCA analysed almost 250 VC exits over the past 17 years, revealing an ecosystem that has evolved beyond isolated success stories to deliver meaningful investor returns and broader economic impact. They also show that the asset class is generating realised returns broadly consistent with more mature international VC markets.

In 2025, African VC exits reached a record 34, a 31% year-on-year increase. Compare this to 15 in 2021 at the peak of the funding boom (according to the Venture Capital in Africa Report 2025).

Within our own portfolio alone, recently we’ve been privileged to work on one of the largest tech deals in African history. In February 2025, RapidDeploy was acquired by US-listed Motorola Solutions for USD 250 M. This is a formidable global company backing an African-born startup, proving that with the right capital, our continent’s startups can scale and compete internationally. 

If valuation discipline now defines African VC, what does that mean for founders and their management teams? Successful exits are built years before a sale through disciplined execution, operational maturity, and demonstrating a competitive, scalable, sustainable, and profitable business that appeals to sophisticated investors and acquirers.

HAVAÍC’s VC playbook

Building a business requires an experienced team, good timing, and smart capital. Beyond just access to money, smart capital builds the disciplines and capabilities that turn a promising product into a resilient company. When operating capability fails to keep up with growth, scale-ups tend to stall. 

At HAVAÍC, we work alongside founders as active strategic shareholders to strengthen the operational foundations that are rarely a founder’s first priority. The test of smart capital is not how much advice is offered; it is whether the company executes the priorities that move enterprise value. 

As companies mature, the focus shifts from proving the model to strengthening it, holding healthy unit economics as volume grows, building robust finance, tightening reporting and governance, and, eventually, mapping out likely exit paths and partners. 

The following six fundamentals are mutually reinforcing, but they create value only when embedded in an organisation’s operating rhythm. The result is a company that is easier to finance, attracts higher valuations, and is more likely to exit successfully. 

Our six fundamentals

One: Data structures

Implementing clean and connected systems that create a single source of truth across finance, operations, and sales. Reliable data enables management teams to make evidence-based decisions, improves forecasting, and gives investors confidence that the business understands its own performance. 

These don’t need to be overly complicated or expensive systems. Used consistently, the right tools implemented by a team who understand the key drivers create that much-needed solid foundation all successful businesses are built on. 

Two: KPI definition & strategic linkage

A small, consistent set of KPIs aligned to strategic objectives ensures every part of the organisation is working towards the same outcomes. Well-defined metrics help management identify problems early and keep growth aligned with true and sustainable value creation. 

This helps advisors and board members to understand the business’ ‘North Star’ so they can help founders and management get there.

Three: Financial reporting

Financial reporting is not merely an accounting or compliance exercise. Timely, trusted management information should explain revenue quality, unit economics, cash conversion, runway, performance against plan, and the drivers of variance. Where relevant, this information should be analysed by product, customer, or market.

Done well, reporting becomes a tool for operating decisions and capital allocation, while building the discipline needed for future diligence.

Four: Strategic insights

Numbers become valuable when they change a decision. Forward-looking analysis should translate data into choices about pricing, product, hiring, market entry, partnerships, and capital allocation, while surfacing risks early enough to act. 

This is where an engaged board and experienced shareholders can add perspective without displacing management ownership. 

Five: People, capability & operating cadence

As businesses scale, leadership depth and organisational capability must scale with them. The right people, governance structures, incentives, and management routines create execution discipline across the organisation. Even strong people can constrain execution when roles, accountabilities, or capabilities no longer match the company’s stage. 

Building the right internal capability creates leverage: good decisions and practices compound through the management team long after a board meeting ends. 

Six: Seeing around the corner

Market shifts, whether driven by technology or regulation, create both risks and opportunities. Having investors, shareholders, and advisors who can anticipate these changes help businesses prepare for the future.

AI is a case in point. It has become an operational necessity. Practical adoption across finance, operations, and reporting can compress work that once took a week into a single day. In a capital-constrained market, that efficiency becomes a genuine competitive advantage.

The conclusion

Capital may start the journey, but it does not build an enduring company. Smart capital combines funding with judgement, operating discipline, and strategic access to help founders make better decisions, build stronger teams, and prepare for scale and eventual liquidity from day one.

In keeping with the maturing African VC market – and the new normal of building sustainable enterprise and shareholder value – HAVAÍC begins with a structured diagnostic. This informs a purpose-built plan across finance, reporting, governance, people, and the operational capabilities that matter most at each stage of a company’s growth. The result is businesses built to last.