Search the continent
47 companies outside South Africa, filterable by country. The 41 South African companies have their own directory.
The full list
All 47 companies outside South Africa, as a table. Country by country, with disclosed funding where it exists.
| Company | Country | Category | Disclosed funding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awarri | Nigeria | African language AI | Undisclosed |
| Intron Health | Nigeria | Healthtech AI | $1.6m pre-seed (2024) |
| Ubenwa Health | Nigeria | Healthtech AI | Undisclosed |
| Curacel | Nigeria | Insurtech AI | $3m seed |
| RxAll | Nigeria | Healthtech AI | ~$6.8m lifetime |
| Indicina | Nigeria | Fintech AI | Undisclosed |
| CDIAL AI | Nigeria | African language AI | Undisclosed |
| Terra Industries | Nigeria | Defence & security AI | Undisclosed |
| BetaLife Health | Nigeria | Healthtech AI | Undisclosed |
| Hello Tractor | Nigeria | Agritech AI | Undisclosed |
| Amini | Kenya | Climate & data AI | $4m seed (Salesforce Ventures) |
| Leta | Kenya | Logistics AI | $5m seed (2025, Google's Africa Investment Fund) |
| Sama | Kenya | Data operations | Undisclosed |
| Fastagger | Kenya | Edge AI | Undisclosed |
| Neural Labs Africa | Kenya | Healthtech AI | Undisclosed |
| Apollo Agriculture | Kenya | Agritech AI | Undisclosed |
| Tala | Kenya | Fintech AI | Undisclosed |
| M-KOPA | Kenya | Fintech AI | Undisclosed |
| Jacaranda Health | Kenya | Healthtech AI (nonprofit) | Undisclosed |
| Intella | Egypt | Arabic speech AI | $12.5m Series A (2025, Prosus) |
| InfiniLink | Egypt | AI semiconductors | $10m seed, acquired by GlobalFoundries (2025) |
| DXwand | Egypt | Conversational AI | $4m Series A (2024) |
| Synapse Analytics | Egypt | MLOps & fintech AI | $2m (2024) |
| Rology | Egypt | Healthtech AI | Growth round (2025) |
| WideBot | Egypt | Arabic AI | ~$3m pre-Series A |
| Qme | Egypt | Customer journey AI | $3m seed (2025) |
| Si-Ware Systems | Egypt | AI hardware | Undisclosed |
| Egrobots | Egypt | Agritech AI | Undisclosed |
| PlayAI | Egypt | Voice AI | Undisclosed |
| iCompass | Tunisia | Arabic NLP | Undisclosed |
| ClusterLab | Tunisia | Arabic AI | Pre-seed led by InstaDeep's CEO |
| Enova Robotics | Tunisia | Robotics | Undisclosed |
| ToumAI Analytics | Morocco | African language AI | $1m pre-seed (2025) |
| DeepEcho | Morocco | Healthtech AI | Undisclosed |
| Hypeo AI | Morocco | Marketing AI | Undisclosed |
| minoHealth AI Labs | Ghana | Healthtech AI | Undisclosed |
| Ghana NLP | Ghana | African language AI | Undisclosed |
| Farmerline | Ghana | Agritech AI | $1.5m (2025, Oikocredit) |
| Yemaachi Biotech | Ghana | Biotech AI | Undisclosed |
| mPharma | Ghana | Healthtech | Undisclosed |
| Pindo | Rwanda | African language AI | Undisclosed |
| Digital Umuganda | Rwanda | African language AI | Undisclosed |
| Charis UAS | Rwanda | Geospatial AI | Undisclosed |
| Kera Health | Senegal | Healthtech AI | $10m (2025, IFC) |
| Baamtu | Senegal | Data & AI services | Undisclosed |
| iCog Labs | Ethiopia | AI R&D | Undisclosed |
| Lesan AI | Ethiopia | African language AI | Undisclosed |
Where the money went
Cumulative AI startup funding by country, top five
Read that chart honestly and two things jump out. First, Tunisia leads because of exactly one company: InstaDeep raised over $100 million before BioNTech bought it for around $680 million. One great company changes a country's whole line. Second, Nigeria has the most AI startups on the continent, 50 by TechCabal's count, and nearly the least funding. Talent is not the constraint. Capital is: 79% of Nigerian AI startups cite capital access as critical, and only 16% have ever touched VC money.
Four hubs run African AI
Lagos has the volume: 50 AI startups, a government-backed open-source LLM in N-ATLAS, OpenAI's first African academy at UNILAG, and a funding gap it refuses to let slow it down.
Nairobi has the infrastructure story: Africa's data annotation workforce, a national AI strategy since March 2025, Oracle's first East African cloud region, and the cautionary tale of a stalled $1bn Microsoft-G42 data centre that proves power is the real bottleneck.
Cairo has the momentum: first in Africa on the 2025 Government AI Readiness Index, a $42.7bn AI economic target by 2030, Nvidia's first Egyptian accelerator, and three of the continent's top eight AI raises in H1 2025.
Cape Town and Joburg have the depth: the most AI organisations on the continent, two thirds of Africa's data centre capacity, the continent's first AI factory with 3,000 Nvidia GPUs live, and the highest generative AI adoption in Africa. Full breakdown on our State of AI in South Africa page.
The stories that defined 2024 to 2026
BioNTech completes its ~$680m acquisition of InstaDeep. African AI gets its proof of exit.
The African Union endorses the Continental AI Strategy. GSMA puts AI's potential value to Africa's economy at $2.9 trillion by 2030.
Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali: 52 countries back the Africa Declaration on AI and pledge a $60bn Africa AI Fund. The money is still a pledge, not a bank balance.
Cassava and Nvidia switch on Africa's first AI factory in South Africa: 3,000 GPUs, scaling toward 12,000 across Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco.
Nigeria launches N-ATLAS, a government-backed open-source LLM for Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, at the UN General Assembly. GSMA later scales the template to five governments.
OpenAI picks the University of Lagos for its first African AI academy and launches its cheapest ChatGPT plan in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.
Google opens Africa's first Applied AI Lab in Accra, part of a $37m AI commitment, and projects $90.6bn in African economic output from its cloud and AI footprint by 2030.
The uncomfortable numbers
Africa holds 18% of the world's population and less than 1% of global data centre capacity. Only 5% of African AI practitioners have adequate access to compute. The continent's 4.7 million developers grow 21% a year, the fastest anywhere, and its AI engineers are recruited abroad at salaries three to ten times local rates. The AI companies above are not building in easy mode. That is precisely why the ones that survive tend to be good.
Questions people actually ask
How many AI companies are there in Africa?
TechCabal's 2026 census counts 207 African AI startups, roughly double the 104 counted in 2022. Our directory tracks the 88 most notable across 10 countries. AfriLabs uses a broader definition and counts more than 2,400 organisations doing AI-related work. The defensible range for genuine AI product companies is 200 to 250.
Which African country has the most AI companies?
Nigeria, with 50 AI startups in TechCabal's 2026 census, just ahead of South Africa's 49. Kenya follows with 31. But South Africa hosts the most AI organisations overall when corporates, research centres and services firms are counted, and leads the continent in generative AI adoption.
What is the most funded AI company in Africa?
InstaDeep, which raised about $107 million before BioNTech acquired it for around $680 million in 2023. Among active independents, the biggest recent rounds are Intella's $12.5m Series A (Egypt), Kera Health's $10m (Senegal), InfiniLink's $10m (Egypt, since acquired by GlobalFoundries) and Cerebrium's $8.5m seed (South Africa).
Is Africa building its own AI models?
Yes, mostly for African languages, where global models underperform. Lelapa AI's InkubaLM (South Africa), Nigeria's N-ATLAS, Ghana NLP's Khaya, Intella's Arabic-dialect models and Rwanda's Kinyarwanda voice stack are all live. The grassroots research collective Masakhane underpins much of the dataset work across 30+ countries.
Why does African AI funding look so small?
Context: African AI startups raised just $4 million across five deals in Q2 2024 while global AI VC hit $23.2 billion that quarter. Africa is about 2.5% of the global AI market. The constraint is capital and compute, not talent. That gap is the opportunity, which is why Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and the Gates Foundation all placed African AI bets in 2025 and 2026.