African-focused startups raised $95.41m in August 2025, closing 28 deals across nine sectors, according to new investment data. While the figure underscores the resilience of the continent’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, it also represents a 2.21% decline from July and a sharper 31.37% drop year-on-year, reflecting broader shifts in global investor sentiment.
Investor headwinds weigh on startup funding
The slowdown was largely attributed to persistent instability in investor confidence, sparked by U.S. tariffs and geopolitical tensions that redirected capital flows into sectors such as defense-tech.
Despite these challenges, African startups demonstrated adaptability, with deals spread across seven funding stages. Venture rounds dominated the month often without disclosed stage details but notable seed and Series A rounds contributed significantly to the month’s totals.
The deal landscape
- Total deals: 28
- Average deal size: $3.41m (including 7 undisclosed)
- Average per deal stage: $13.63m
- Countries represented: 8, with Kenya leading the table
- Sectors: 9, with energy accounting for the largest share of deal value
- Startup age: 20 of the 28 startups were founded from 2020 onwards, underscoring the rise of post-pandemic ventures
Among founders, both first-time and repeat entrepreneurs featured prominently, though “2X” and “1X” founders accounted for the majority of activity.
CrossBoundary Energy tops the charts
The largest deal of the month was secured by CrossBoundary Energy, which raised $40m in a venture round led by Impact Fund Denmark. The capital will be deployed to expand sustainable energy projects across Africa, aiming to cut carbon emissions, enhance living standards, and unlock new economic opportunities.
Spotlight: Yamify bets on Africa-first AI infrastructure
One of the most closely watched early-stage deals came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Yamify, an AI infrastructure startup, raised $100,000 in pre-seed funding from angel investor Felix Anane an early backer of fintech unicorn Paystack.
Founded in 2024 by former TikTok and Salesforce engineer Luc Okalobé, Yamify is building a GPU-powered cloud platform hosted entirely in African data centres. Its goal is to provide startups, developers, and agencies with the ability to deploy open-source AI applications without managing expensive in-house infrastructure.
At its core, Yamify functions like an AI app store. Its “Managed Cloud Prototypes (MCP)” feature allows users to deploy AI tools chatbots, video generators, automation agents and language models in minutes through a simple chat interface. Billing is processed in local African currencies, easing adoption.
The platform has already attracted more than 1,500 developers to its waitlist, including startups such as Vaultpay.io (YC 2023). Paid plans begin at $15/month for individuals and $500/year for agencies. Yamify aims to onboard 100,000 users in its first six months.
Local-first strategy, global ambition
Unlike global hyperscalers such as AWS and Google Cloud, Yamify is pursuing a local-first strategy:
- Hosting in Africa to improve speed and compliance
- Billing in local currencies
- Integrating with mobile money systems
- Optimizing costs through automated workload management
The startup is also cultivating grassroots adoption through hackathons, developer communities and university partnerships.
“We’re not just building for Africa, we’re building from Africa,” said Okalobé.
Yamify is currently raising an additional $100,000 to close its pre-seed round, with a long-term vision to become the continent’s default AI infrastructure layer enabling African innovators to create the next generation of AI-driven solutions while advancing regional AI sovereignty.
Despite a softer funding month, August’s deal activity underscores Africa’s ability to attract capital in frontier industries such as energy and AI infrastructure. As investors recalibrate in response to global headwinds, local-first, impact-driven ventures may continue to attract both regional and international backers.
