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Across Africa, tech festivals are no longer just about exchanging business cards. They are fast becoming the places where startup deals are made.
From Lagos and Nairobi to Cape Town and Marrakech, large tech events are bringing founders, investors, corporates and regulators into the same rooms, often for the first time. Analysts say these festivals are now shaping how Africa’s startup ecosystem works.
“What we used to have were networking-heavy meetups; people exchanged contacts and went home,” Alphonce Chinedu, a Nigerian business analyst who tracks tech and investment trends, told Bird.
“What we are seeing now is a more holistic model. Organisers are building full ecosystem platforms, combining panel discussions with pitch sessions, investor matchmaking, corporate showcases and side events that bring the entire innovation value chain into one place.”
This is what Chinedu refers to as the “unification value” of the festivals, the short moments when people who normally operate far apart finally meet and move from introductions to real conversations.
Caleb-Maru, founder of Tech Safari, agrees. He says, “tech festivals are now more than networking: they collapse a fragmented ecosystem into a single, visible moment. Founders, investors, corporates and regulators come together, accelerating understanding and shortening decision cycles.”
“Africa’s liquidity pipes are clogged. Festivals and curated events create the pressure points where capital actually meets opportunity, helping deals move faster despite structural delays,” Maru said.
The shift is easy to see at events like the Africa Startup Festival in Lagos, held in November 2025. Organisers said more than 3,000 people from over 15 countries attended, with many of them senior decision-makers.
Payment companies showed off cross-border tools, corporates pitched partnerships, and support groups announced grants. Marketing firm St Paul’s Africa, in partnership with Spark Africa, announced a US$5,000 marketing grant for early-stage startups, a concrete intervention aimed at lowering the cost of user acquisition.
At the African Startup Conference in Algiers in December, travel-tech startup Völz announced a US$5 million funding round. GITEX Africa has also built deal-making into its format. Its Supernova pitch competition puts startups directly in front of investors.
In 2024, winner Lupiya, a Zambian neobank, went on to raise about US$500,000 after the event. Smaller, more focused events play a role too. Africa Tech Summit Nairobi, for example, selects just a handful of startups each year to pitch directly to investors, cutting through the noise. That mixture of curated investor sessions, corporate activations and grants is the architecture.
Bonface Orucho, bird story agency.
