Moonshot 2025: What African VCs Talked about

It’s arduous to clarify all that patrons talked about at Moonshot 2025, TechCabal’s flagship conference, nevertheless three most vital themes stood out: a) how startups need financial self-discipline sooner than attaining scale, b) tips about how you can pivot to engineered exits, and c) how further African VCs are an increasing number of turning to Asia for capital as many firms put collectively to spice up funds in Q1 2026. 

For Olu Oyinsan, the managing companion at Oui Capital, engineering exits means backing corporations with a clear path to profitability. In response to the investor who returned his first fund, startups should have a “mounted worth restoration mentality” that guides them to make more money than they spend on an operational mounted worth basis over time.

Some patrons pointed to rising sophistication all through the ecosystem as further founders now start pitch decks with a “path to profitability” slide,as funds are further hands-on in operationalising self-discipline. “All people’s participating in moneyball now,” talked about one fund supervisor who requested to not be named to speak freely. “You need secure maths, a plan, and a transparent cap desk.”

“There’s a lot much less give consideration to burning cash… further give consideration to guaranteeing the enterprise model is sustainable sooner than massive scale,” talked about Samuel Frank, an affiliate at Sahara Impression Ventures, a Ghanaian native climate tech fund, echoing the give consideration to self-discipline for startups. 

As LP urge for meals cools all through Europe and the US—normally the first ports of title for African VC fund managers—many firms are turning to Asia for capital that’s further affected particular person and philosophically aligned with long-term investments, two patrons knowledgeable TechCabal on the sidelines of Moonshot. 

In late August, Japan’s development finance institution, the Japan Worldwide Cooperation Firm (JICA), signed on as a restricted companion in Novastar Ventures, a $200 million fund. That exact same month, Uncovered Fund, a Japanese company centered on early-stage investing in Africa, partnered with Monex Group, a Tokyo-based financial suppliers agency, to once more startups all through Africa and the Middle East with a $20 million fund.

This LP shift may reshape the sorts of corporations that get backed and the timelines they’re judged by. If these gives help shut funds, the expectation is that pre-seed and seed  startups will see an uptick in funding nevertheless with smaller cheques.

For Freda Isingoma, the senior fund supervisor at Octopus Investments, deeper native capital swimming swimming pools, notably at Assortment B and C, are vital to unlocking further exit options for African startups. Isingoma pointed to the UK’s Varied Funding Market (AIM) as a attainable model: a secondary alternate the place smaller, high-growth firms can go public beneath lighter regulatory burdens.

Whereas it’s maybe troublesome for African startups to itemizing on the London Stock Commerce (LSE), which hosts spherical 110 African corporations from over 20 nations with a combined market capitalisation exceeding $110 billion, AIM has a lot much less stringent requirements.

AIM has helped mid-sized corporations entry public capital with out the price and complexity of itemizing on the first London Stock Commerce. Isingoma advisable that African startups consider twin pathways: itemizing an equity line right into a world alternate to attract liquidity and institutional patrons whereas conserving their operational base and progress engine native.