{"id":229846,"date":"2025-10-21T17:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T17:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229846\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T17:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T17:40:08","slug":"moonshot-2025-what-african-vcs-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229846\/","title":{"rendered":"Moonshot 2025: What African VCs said"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to describe all that investors talked<\/a> about at Moonshot 2025, TechCabal\u2019s flagship conference, but three main themes stood out: a) how startups need financial discipline before attaining scale, b) how to pivot to engineered exits, and c) how more African VCs are increasingly turning to Asia for capital as many firms prepare to raise funds in Q1 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Olu Oyinsan, the managing partner at Oui Capital, engineering exits means backing businesses with a clear path to profitability. According to the investor who returned his first fund<\/a>, startups should have a \u201cfixed cost recovery mentality\u201d that guides them to make more money than they spend on an operational fixed cost basis over time.<\/p>\n

Some investors pointed to growing sophistication across the ecosystem as more founders now start pitch decks with a \u201cpath to profitability\u201d slide,as funds are more hands-on in operationalising discipline. \u201cEveryone\u2019s playing moneyball now,\u201d said one fund manager who asked not to be named to speak freely. \u201cYou need solid maths, a plan, and a clean cap table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s less focus on burning cash\u2026 more focus on ensuring the business model is sustainable before massive scale,\u201d said Samuel Frank, an associate at Sahara Impact Ventures, a Ghanaian climate tech fund, echoing the focus on discipline for startups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As LP appetite cools across Europe and the US\u2014typically the first ports of call for African VC fund managers\u2014many firms are turning to Asia for capital that\u2019s more patient and philosophically aligned with long-term investments, two investors told TechCabal on the sidelines of Moonshot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In late August, Japan\u2019s development finance institution, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), signed on as a limited partner in Novastar Ventures, a $200 million fund. That same month, Uncovered Fund, a Japanese firm focused on early-stage investing in Africa, partnered with Monex Group, a Tokyo-based financial services company, to back startups across Africa and the Middle East with a $20 million <\/a>fund.<\/p>\n

This LP shift may reshape the types of companies that get backed and the timelines they\u2019re judged by. If those deals help close funds, the expectation is that pre-seed and seed\u00a0 startups will see an uptick in funding but with smaller cheques.<\/p>\n

For Freda Isingoma, the senior fund manager at Octopus Investments, deeper local capital pools, especially at Series B and C, are essential to unlocking more exit opportunities for African startups. Isingoma pointed to the UK\u2019s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) as a possible model: a secondary exchange where smaller, high-growth firms can go public under lighter regulatory burdens.<\/p>\n

While it might be difficult for African startups to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which hosts around 110 African companies from over 20 countries<\/a> with a combined market capitalisation exceeding $110 billion, AIM has less stringent requirements.<\/p>\n

AIM has helped mid-sized companies access public capital without the cost and complexity of listing on the main London Stock Exchange. Isingoma suggested that African startups consider dual pathways: listing an equity line into an international exchange to attract liquidity and institutional investors while keeping their operational base and growth engine local.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to describe all that investors talked about at Moonshot 2025, TechCabal\u2019s flagship conference, but three main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-229846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}