In October 2025, over a hundred angel investors and venture capitalists converged at the J. Randle Centre for Yorùbá Culture & History in Lagos, Nigeria.
The goal, as outlined in a speech by Yemi Keri, President of the African Business Angel Network (ABAN), was to reflect on the state of angel investing on the continent and figure out what the future could look like.
“We’re the first believers,” she told the eager gathering. “We take the initial risk. We’re the architects of our own economic destiny, so let us start building our own tables.”
Fadilah Tchoumba, CEO of ABAN, while reviewing the previous year, recalls that 2025 was a crucial year for angel investors in many ways.
The previous year brought significant macroeconomic changes. Some of the continent’s largest economies, including Kenya, Egypt, and Nigeria, witnessed record inflation and currency devaluations that forced many angel investors to reassess their investments into startups.
Those developments also forced crucial conversations between angels and venture capitalists, with the consensus being that both parties needed to collaborate more often to provide pipelines for early-stage startups funded by angels to receive additional capital from VCs and potentially create exits for the former.
Consequently, targeted actions were taken to build stronger bonds between angel investors and venture capitalists. For 2026, Techpoint Africa asked two angel investors their thoughts on where the industry is headed next.
More capital deployed
Despite the macroeconomic shocks of 2024 forcing investors to pull back, Tchoumba is confident there won’t be a repeat in 2026, noting that a lot of work has gone into educating angel investors on their role in the ecosystem and on how to invest despite discouraging macroeconomic conditions.
“Going forward into 2026, I see the majority of angel networks and angel investors recognising their position as early-stage investors that are there to help founders to refine, test, and find product market fit for the startup.”
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A key priority for angel investors, according to Tchoumba, is increasing capital deployment. Angels have played critical roles at various stages of the ecosystem, providing both funding and counsel to startups. Yet they are persistently criticised for not deploying enough capital.
As Joel Nana Kontchou observes, many of Africa’s high-net-worth individuals are still hesitant to embrace venture capital as an asset class, preferring more familiar vehicles such as real estate and public equities.
Tchoumba, however, argues that this is beginning to change. A decade ago, angel investors struggled to commit more than $1,000 at a time. Today, individual angels frequently write cheques exceeding $10,000 into a single deal. Even so, significant gaps remain in early-stage funding across the continent.
Unlike more mature ecosystems such as the United States or Europe, where experienced founders and early employees who understand the startup cycle are plentiful and therefore more willing to reinvest, Africa’s tech ecosystems have yet to produce enough exits to build deep confidence or generate meaningful liquidity. The memory of significant losses during the exuberant 2020–2022 cycle also remains fresh for many first-time investors who entered the market during that period.
One initiative expected to boost angel investment is Catalytic Africa, a programme designed to expand the pool of capital available to founders by co-investing alongside angel syndicates.
Under the arrangement, a syndicate that invests $20,000 will receive a matching investment, while those investing $10,000 or less will have their contributions doubled. The initiative plans to back more than 20 startups in 2026.
A second effort aimed at increasing available capital is the creation of an African early-stage investment special-purpose vehicle, structured to facilitate cross-border investments by angel investors.
Great ideas are no longer enough
For Kontchou, despite the shifts in the venture capital ecosystem, many founders still operate as though having an idea alone is sufficient to attract angel capital. He also questions the overall depth of the current founder pipeline, arguing that incubators must do more to equip entrepreneurs with foundational business skills.
He further attributes the reluctance of many high-net-worth individuals to join the angel investor pool to weaknesses in legal systems across much of the continent, particularly their limited capacity to protect investors, a concern Tchoumba shares.
According to her, early-stage instruments such as SAFEs remain unfamiliar to many African angels, and until recently, there was uncertainty about whether such agreements would be upheld. That, she notes, is gradually changing as more investors become comfortable with these structures.
In deciding whether to back a founder, both Kontchou and Tchoumba converge on one defining factor: character.
“If the founder is serious, we don’t even need a contract to work. People may fail, but at least you know they gave it their all,” Kontchou says.
For both investors, a brilliant idea alone no longer guarantees funding. Their focus is on founders who demonstrate operational discipline, remain open to investor input, and communicate frequently. Kontchou recounts instances within his own portfolio where founders have gone silent for months, leaving investors uncertain about the state of their companies.
While they acknowledge that early-stage founders may not have all the answers to the challenges that arise in building a startup, they insist that founders must possess deep knowledge of the industries they choose to enter. Tchoumba adds that beyond industry familiarity, founders must also clearly demonstrate that the problem they are tackling is both real and meaningful.
Looking ahead
Looking ahead to 2026, Kontchou says he has grown more cautious about backing fintech startups.
“There’s no market for a thousand fintechs,” he argues, suggesting the sector may be reaching saturation that could prompt a consolidation.
Insurance, however, remains an area he believes founders can still build meaningful solutions. Agritech is another sector he is exploring, though he notes that scaling innovation in the space is often constrained by infrastructure gaps. Weak road networks and other logistical challenges, he says, make it difficult for agritech solutions to achieve meaningful scale.
Exits, meanwhile, remain elusive for investors across the board. For angel investors deploying personal capital, the absence of liquidity is felt even more acutely. Tchoumba contends that the limited participation of local corporates in the investment cycle further diminishes exit prospects.
Corporates, she argues, are natural acquirers and can help moderate valuation expectations by aligning startup pricing with what strategic buyers are actually willing to pay.
“We as African investors cannot afford to operate without liquidity in the market,” she says. “Otherwise, we risk seeing a weakened startup pipeline, simply because the angels committing capital have reached an exhaustion point.”
