African startups saw a surge in funding in July 2025, buoyed by several mega-deals in the clean energy sector alongside numerous early-stage investments across fintech, biotech, AI, and more. In total, startups on the continent raised roughly $555 million in July – the highest monthly total this year – with about 83% of this capital coming from debt financings. African startups secured a total of $391.1 million in publicly disclosed funding in June 2025
Below is a summary of key funding deals that closed during the month, categorized by country, region, industry, and whether the financing was equity or debt:
- d.light (Kenya, East Africa) – Off-Grid Solar Energy – $300M debt. Pay-as-you-go solar provider d.light expanded its receivables financing by $300 million through a new line of credit. This massive securitized facility brings d.light’s total structured finance base to over $840M and will fuel expansion of solar home systems and consumer appliance financing across Africa.
- Sun King (Kenya, East Africa) – Off-Grid Solar Energy – $156M debt. Closed a $156 million securitisation deal in local currency to finance 1.4 million off-grid solar systems and smartphones in Kenya. This is one of the largest PAYG solar financings in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa.
- Candi Solar (Switzerland†, operates in Southern Africa) – Clean Energy (Solar) – $24M debt. A $24 million raise led by a $20M convertible loan from Norfund and a $4M mezzanine top-up, aimed at expanding Candi’s solar panel installations in South Africa and India.
- Rwazi (Mauritius, East Africa) – AI/Market Intelligence – $12M equity. African-founded Rwazi raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Bonfire Ventures to scale its AI-powered market intelligence platform providing consumer data across emerging markets.
- Cerebrium (South Africa-founded, Southern Africa) – AI Infrastructure – $8.5M equity. Cerebrium, founded in Cape Town and now HQ’d in New York, raised $8.5 million seed funding led by Google’s Gradient Ventures. The startup provides a serverless platform for developers to deploy AI models at scale, addressing high cloud costs and latency in enterprise AI development.
- ORA Technologies (Morocco, North Africa) – Super-App (E-commerce & Fintech) – $7.5M equity. Raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Morocco’s Azur Innovation Fund, marking one of the largest local-led rounds in Morocco. ORA’s platform offers food delivery (“Kooul”) and a mobile wallet (“ORA Cash”), with plans to scale last-mile logistics and digital payments domestically.
- Zero Carbon Charge (South Africa, Southern Africa) – Clean Energy (EV Charging) – $5.6M equity. Raised ZAR 100 million (~$5.6M) in equity from the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Zero Carbon Charge is building off-grid, solar-powered ultra-fast EV charging stations every 150km along South African highways. The DBSA funding will help install solar+battery charging hubs nationwide, reducing reliance on the grid and enabling long-distance electric vehicle travel.
- ARC Ride (Kenya, East Africa) – E-Mobility (Electric Motorbikes) – $5M debt. Nairobi-based ARC Ride secured a $5 million investment led by British International Investment (BII) to deploy 5,000 electric “boda-boda” motorcycles and expand its battery-swapping networktheouut.com. This debt financing will accelerate Kenya’s transition to electric two-wheelers by funding bikes and charging stations (BII took a similar approach with a $7.5M loan to e-bus startup BasiGo in 2023).
- Solarise Africa (South Africa, Southern Africa) – Renewable Energy (C&I solar) – $3.4M mezzanine equity. Raised via a follow-on mezzanine investment (preference shares) from Mergence Investment Managers to expand commercial solar projects.
- BFREE (Nigeria, West Africa) – Fintech (Debt Financing) – $3M debt. Obtained $3 million in debt financing from Verdant Capital’s fund to expand its ethical digital debt collection and distressed-loan acquisition in Africa. BFREE’s platform helps lenders recover loans with AI-driven, borrower-friendly processes.
- Flend (Egypt, North Africa) – Fintech (SME Lending) – $3M mixed. Raised $3 million in a blended seed round combining equity and debt to scale its digital SME lending platform and tackle Egypt’s ~$50B SME credit gap.
- Altera Biosciences (South Africa, Southern Africa) – Biotech – $1.6M equity. A pre-seed equity round to develop universal donor cell therapy solutions.
- Yikodeen (Nigeria, West Africa) – Manufacturing (Safety Footwear) – $1.5M equity. Received a $1.5 million equity investment from Aruwa Capital to expand its Lagos factory and 5x its production of industrial safety boots. This investment will help Yikodeen become West Africa’s largest safety footwear manufacturer and create hundreds of local jobs, especially for women.
- MoneyBadger (South Africa, Southern Africa) – Fintech (Crypto Payments) – $400K equity. Secured $400,000 (R7 million) pre-seed funding led by P1 Ventures to expand its Bitcoin payments infrastructure for retailers (the startup has already enabled crypto payments in 1,600+ stores in South Africa).
- Blueroomcare (Nigeria, West Africa) – Healthtech (Mental Health) – $50K debt. Received a $50,000 follow-on investment in the form of a convertible revenue-based loan from EHA Impact Ventures to support its teletherapy platform’s growth.
Clean Energy & Climate Tech Dominate Funding
July 2025 was defined by big-ticket investments in clean energy and climate tech. Kenyan off-grid solar leaders d.light and Sun King alone accounted for over $456 million of the month’s capital raised, underscoring investor confidence in Africa’s pay-as-you-go solar sector. Both deals were debt-based: d.light’s $300M receivables line will allow it to reach millions of new customers with solar home systems on credit, while Sun King’s KES 20.1B (~$156M) securitization – backed by Kenyan banks and DFIs – will finance 1.4 million new solar products and smartphones for low-income households. These financings, among the largest of their kind, highlight how local-currency debt structures are unlocking scale for Africa’s energy access companies. Another notable deal was Candi Solar’s $24M raise to expand commercial solar in South Africa; notably, this included a $20M convertible loan from Norfund and a mezzanine top-up, reflecting the blended finance models increasingly used in climate investments.
Investment in electric mobility also accelerated. Kenya’s ARC Ride secured $5M (led by the UK’s DFI, BII) to put 5,000 electric motorbikes on the road and grow its battery-swapping network – a big boost for electrifying the region’s ubiquitous motorcycle taxis. In South Africa, Zero Carbon Charge raised ~$5.6M in equity from a development bank to deploy solar-powered EV charging stations nationwide, tackling infrastructure gaps that have hindered EV adoption. These deals signal strong momentum in Africa’s green transport infrastructure, often backed by impact-focused investors.
Diverse Early-Stage Deals in Fintech, AI and Beyond
Beyond energy and climate, July saw a breadth of smaller (mostly equity) rounds across industries. Fintech remained active, albeit with modest-sized deals. Egypt’s Flend closed a $3M seed round (equity + debt) to scale its digital SME lending platform, aiming to address a massive financing gap for small businesses in Egypt. In Nigeria, lending-platform BFREE obtained a $3M debt investment from Verdant Capital to grow its ethically-driven loan recovery services – an example of fintech innovation in credit management attracting non-equity capital. South Africa’s MoneyBadger, a crypto-payments startup, raised a $400K pre-seed to expand its Bitcoin point-of-sale integrations, leveraging the country’s increasing retail crypto usage.
Notably, deep-tech and biotech ventures also drew investor interest. Cerebrium, an AI infrastructure startup founded in South Africa, snagged $8.5M in seed funding led by Google’s Gradient Ventures – a significant vote of confidence in Africa-born talent building cutting-edge cloud/AI tools. And in Cape Town, Altera Biosciences secured $1.6M (pre-seed) to develop “universal donor” cells for gene therapy, positioning it as a trailblazer in Africa’s emerging biotech scene. These deals, though smaller, underscore a widening of Africa’s startup focus into advanced tech domains traditionally underfunded on the continent.
The healthtech and industrial sectors were represented too. Nigeria’s Blueroomcare, a women-led digital mental health platform, earned a $50K follow-on investment via a convertible loan – modest in size, but meaningful as it supports mental healthcare innovation and came from an impact investor (EHA Ventures) committed to social outcomes. In Nigerian manufacturing, Yikodeen – a safety boot maker – landed $1.5M from Aruwa Capital to 5x its factory output. This deal stands out as a private-equity style investment in local manufacturing, aimed at boosting domestic production (PPE for industries) and job creation, especially for women (over 60% of Yikodeen’s factory workers).
Regional Highlights: East Africa Leads
East Africa – particularly Kenya – dominated July’s funding by value, thanks to the d.light and Sun King mega-deals. Kenya-based startups accounted for the lion’s share of capital (over $456M combined) and saw strong activity in energy and mobility. In addition to the two solar giants, Kenya produced the ARC Ride deal and multiple smaller rounds not listed above, solidifying its position as the month’s top ecosystem. This reflects Kenya’s robust pipeline in clean energy and fintech, and the presence of active development financiers in Nairobi.
North Africa also had notable wins. Morocco’s ORA Technologies raised one of the largest tech rounds in its market ($7.5M), exemplifying growth in Francophone Africa’s startup scene with local investors leading the charge. In Egypt, Flend’s $3M seed in fintech added to the country’s steady stream of early-stage deals, and Cairo’s thriving investor network (including local VCs and banks) participated in that round.
West Africa (notably Nigeria) saw relatively smaller deals in July, continuing a 2025 trend of lagging East Africa in mega-roundslinkedin.com. Still, Nigeria produced a mix of equity and debt deals targeting fundamental needs: fintech (BFREE’s loan recovery, MoneyBadger’s crypto payments), healthcare (Blueroomcare), and manufacturing (Yikodeen). The $1.5M invested in Yikodeen by Lagos-based Aruwa Capital is especially significant as it bolsters local industry and showcases the role of homegrown funds in nurturing SMEs. Ghana, Uganda, and other markets were comparatively quiet in July, as no single deal from those countries matched the scale of Kenya’s or even Nigeria’s during the month.
Southern Africa (South Africa in particular) delivered a mix of innovation and impact. South Africa had deals spanning biotech (Altera), AI (Cerebrium), crypto (MoneyBadger), and clean energy (Solarise Africa’s solar financing and Zero Carbon Charge’s EV infrastructure). While none of these individual SA deals neared the size of Kenya’s big two, collectively they demonstrate a healthy diversity in South Africa’s startup funding. The $5.6M investment into Zero Carbon Charge by a national development bank also underlines the South African public sector’s support for climate-tech entrepreneurship.
Conclusion
July 2025 was a breakout month for African startup funding, characterized by large-scale debt financing for climate and energy ventures alongside steady equity funding across tech startups. The outsized financings of d.light and Sun King show that mature African ventures can attract significant capital to address infrastructure gaps in energy. At the same time, the breadth of smaller deals – from fintech and AI to healthcare and manufacturing – indicates a maturing ecosystem with diverse innovations being funded in all corners of the continent. Notably, local and regional investors (like Aruwa Capital and Azur Fund) played key roles in many deals, as did international backers (Gradient, Norfund, BII), reflecting a blend of capital sources.
Going forward, the July 2025 funding results suggest that Africa’s startup landscape is balancing scale and scope: tackling big development challenges with big money (often via debt) while also nurturing early-stage tech solutions via venture investment. This bodes well for the continent’s ability to sustain its startup momentum, driving both impact and innovation through homegrown companies.
***All the listed deals were publicly disclosed as closed investments (not just announced or speculative), ensuring the analysis is based on verified funding events
