Africa’s industrial future requires a distinct type of capital

A quiet frustration spreads by means of Nigeria’s know-how ecosystem. In 2024, over 70% of fairness funding went to fintech. Funds, lending, neobanking, and remittances dominate headlines whereas corporations constructing sovereign protection programs, industrial automation platforms, local weather infrastructure, well being programs, and deep scientific platforms battle to lift even modest capital.

This imbalance displays a slim definition of what constitutes a “good know-how enterprise”: fast-scaling, asset-light, platform-driven corporations promising venture-scale exits inside a decade. By that commonplace, applied sciences vital to Africa’s long-term improvement are structurally disqualified. Take into account Terra Industries, a Nigerian defence know-how firm that bought validation from Silicon Valley earlier than native VCs. If a startup can not produce traditional enterprise outcomes, it’s implicitly handled as undeserving of significant capital, irrespective of its strategic significance in nation-building.

Africa can not afford this logic.

Enterprise capital is highly effective. However it’s a specialised capital construction optimised for speedy person development, low marginal prices, international scalability, and clear exit pathways. This works exceptionally effectively for shopper web and fintech. It really works much less effectively for asset-heavy sectors requiring longer improvement cycles, heavier upfront capital, and deeper institutional integration. Their worth compounds over many years, not the compressed timelines most VC funds demand.

The issue isn’t irrational buyers; they’re responding to their incentives. The issue is that Africa’s tech ecosystem has allowed one financing instrument to develop into the yardstick for technological legitimacy.

Fintech has created actual worth in Africa. It has improved monetary entry, decreased friction, and expanded digital participation. However a monetary system is finally by-product. It reallocates worth; it doesn’t create the underlying productive base. You can’t construct a powerful economic system on fee rails alone. If Africa over-invests in monetary abstractions whereas under-investing in technological functionality, the continent dangers changing into wonderful at shifting cash whereas having a structurally weak industrial base. That isn’t a path to prosperity; it’s a path to everlasting vulnerability.

Africa’s actual know-how frontier

The applied sciences shaping Africa’s future embrace sovereign protection capabilities, instruments elevating agricultural yield, programs accelerating pharmaceutical improvement, bioprocessing, electrified mobility, healthtech, vitality applied sciences, and manufacturing effectivity platforms, and so forth. These will not be “horny” by enterprise requirements, however they straight decide whether or not Africa can construct indigenous productive functionality, seize extra worth domestically, construct resilient domestically embedded provide chains, combat illness and starvation, and create expert technical jobs

If Africa waits for enterprise capital to unravel this downside, it’ll wait indefinitely. The continent should intentionally domesticate different capital stacks: affected person fairness autos accepting slower liquidity timelines; revenue-based financing for corporations with predictable enterprise revenues; public-private co-investment sharing early technical danger; project-linked know-how finance tied to particular deployments quite than summary platform development; and development-backed business capital with softer return expectations. These devices exist globally, however Africa has merely underutilised them for know-how.

A regulatory opening

Nigeria’s Funding and Securities Act 2025 creates an essential alternative. By modernising capital market guidelines and accommodating new classes of securities, fundraising mechanisms, and personal market buildings, it alerts recognition that capital formation should evolve with financial actuality. When regulation solely suits venture-style fundraising, ecosystems tilt towards venture-style corporations. 

When regulation expands, a extra various know-how economic system turns into attainable. Nigeria now has an opportunity to design capital pathways for industrial, scientific, and infrastructure-adjacent applied sciences—not simply digital platforms.

Nonetheless, coverage alone is inadequate. A deeper cultural shift is required throughout founders, buyers, accelerators, and media. We should cease asking solely “Can this develop into a unicorn?” and begin asking “Does this meaningfully increase Africa’s productive capability?” An organization that digitises 200 factories, raises nationwide manufacturing high quality, and creates hundreds of expert jobs could by no means be value $10 billion. However its financial influence may exceed that of many billion-dollar shopper apps. Affect and valuation will not be the identical factor. Each matter and will not be interchangeable.

Africa wants a second dominant tech narrative alongside venture-backed startups: know-how as sovereign functionality and industrial infrastructure. This narrative naturally attracts totally different capital sources—pension funds, sovereign autos, improvement finance establishments, and so forth. When storytelling modifications, capital flows comply with.

Fintech will stay essential. Enterprise capital will stay helpful. However neither ought to be mistaken for the totality of Africa’s know-how future. If Africa is severe about transformation, it should finance the applied sciences that make issues, not solely the applied sciences that transfer cash. Nigeria’s evolving regulatory setting provides a platform to steer this shift. 

The true problem is whether or not ecosystem actors—founders, buyers, policymakers, and media—have the braveness to widen the aperture of what they regard as  “investable tech.” Africa’s industrial future is not going to be constructed by one funding mannequin. It is going to be constructed by a monetary creativeness massive sufficient to match the size of its ambitions. 

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Olumide Awoyemi is the founding father of Symmex, a know-how firm targeted on growing progressive industrial tech merchandise.