African tech venture funding rebounded sharply in 2025 after nearly two years of slowdown, with startups raising $4.1 billion, their best performance since 2022.
The findings, published in Partech’s Africa Tech Venture Capital Report 2025, highlight a renewed investor appetite despite persistent global financial constraints.
But the recovery reflects more than a cyclical upswing, marking a structural shift toward debt financing as a core source of capital.
Debt funding reached $1.6 billion, up 63% from 2024 and spread across 107 deals, an all‑time high for the continent.
Debt now represents 41% of all capital invested in African tech, compared to 31% in 2024 and just 17% in 2019, according to the report.
Equity funding, by contrast, grew more modestly, rising 8% to $2.4 billion across 462 transactions.
According to Partech, this pivot toward debt stems from a global normalization of venture capital, tighter valuations, longer fundraising cycles, and more selective equity investors.
