1.  To put that number in perspective: this is not a startup chasing survival money.  What makes Moniepoint’s story different from the typical funding headline is that it arrived on the back of profitability.  The company began as a software provider for Nigerian banks.

Today, it is the infrastructure millions of small business owners use every single day without thinking about it - the POS terminal at your tailor’s shop, the merchant account your local food vendor uses to receive transfers. 2. LemFi (formerly Lemonade Finance) — $53 Million (Series B)LemFi, the platform transforming how immigrant communities access financial services, raised $53 million in Series B funding led by Highland Europe, with participation from previous investors Left Lane Capital, Palm Drive Capital, and Y Combinator.  The founders - Nigerian Ridwan Olalere and his co-founder Rian Cochran - built the company on a problem they had lived with personally: the frustration of sending money across borders affordably and reliably. The results have been striking. 3.

Raenest — $11 Million (Series A)If you have ever freelanced for an international client and spent days trying to figure out how to receive your dollar payment without losing a significant chunk to fees and conversion drama, Raenest was built for you.  That pivot paid off. 4. SeamlessHR — $9 Million (Series A Extension)Behind every company that pays salaries on time, tracks leave, manages compliance, and handles workforce data is some form of HR infrastructure. For a growing number of African enterprises, that infrastructure is SeamlessHR. Enterprise HR tech company SeamlessHR secured a $9 million Series A extension round backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Helios Ventures.  The involvement of the Gates Foundation - not typically known for chasing tech returns - signals something beyond commercial interest. There is a development argument here: when companies can pay people accurately and on time, manage compliance, and track workforce data properly, it creates conditions for economic dignity. 5. Chowdeck — $9 Million (Series A)Chowdeck, a Lagos-based food delivery startup that has stayed profitable in a notoriously tough and low-margin market, raised $9 million in Series A funding to launch a quick commerce strategy and expand into more cities in Nigeria and Ghana.  Profitability in food delivery is genuinely rare - the global graveyard of food delivery companies that raised hundreds of millions and still could not survive is long. Chowdeck’s approach has been deliberately unglamorous: enter cities only when the numbers work, earn trust with reliable delivery of local favourites, build lean. 6. Kredete — $22 Million (Series A)Access to credit remains one of the most stubborn bottlenecks for Nigerian small businesses. Banks demand collateral that most SME owners do not have. Loan sharks charge rates that make growth impossible. Kredete is building the infrastructure to change that equation - credit scoring systems and lending solutions designed specifically for small businesses that the traditional financial system has historically written off. 7. Raenest — Business Banking for African StartupsWhile Raenest’s consumer product serves individual freelancers, its business banking platform has become a quiet essential for the Nigerian startup ecosystem itself. 8. Mansa — $10 Million (Seed Round)Cross-border payments in West Africa have long been plagued by slow settlement times, liquidity gaps, and fees that eat into already thin margins for importers and exporters. Mansa’s bet is that stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure can solve what traditional banking has been unable to. The $10 million seed round - substantial by any standard, exceptional for a seed - reflects investor conviction that the rails for African cross-border commerce need to be rebuilt from scratch, and that Mansa has a credible vision for doing it. 9. Payaza — $10 MillionNigeria’s payment infrastructure story is often told through the names that raised the most: Flutterwave, Paystack, Moniepoint. But the ecosystem beneath those household names is full of infrastructure players doing the quiet, essential work of keeping transactions moving.  Payaza sits squarely in that flow - a payments infrastructure provider building the tools that businesses need to accept, process, and move money. 10. OmniBiz — $20 MillionThis one is different from everything else on this list, and that is precisely why it matters. OmniBiz is not building a consumer app or a remittance platform. It is digitising the supply chain that feeds Nigeria - the chain of manufacturers, distributors, and small retailers that moves fast-moving consumer goods from the factory floor to the corner shop in your neighbourhood. That informal retail network is enormous and almost entirely offline, running on phone calls, cash, and paper records. OmniBiz’s $20 million raise is a bet that bringing digital infrastructure to this chain - ordering, inventory, logistics, last-mile delivery, all in one platform - is one of the highest-leverage plays available in the Nigerian economy right now. If it works, it does not just build a successful startup.  The narrative that global investors have retreated from Africa is only partly true - what they have retreated from is speculation. What is still attracting serious money is proven execution: startups solving real, painful, large-scale problems with demonstrated traction and, increasingly, actual profitability.