London-based startup Affinity Lab has announced a $2M pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from Antler, Google DeepMind, Meta, Playfair VC, Marcello Ascani, and Devran Amaratunga Karaca. The funding included a £497,787 grant from Innovate UK.
In 2023, Black Seed raised £5 million and positioned itself as one of the UK's few venture funds built specifically around Black founders.
MENA’s startup funding market entered the second half of 2026 with a notable change in the composition of capital. Startups across the region raised $172.6 million across 45 deals in July, up 16% from June but still 78% below the amount raised in July 2025.
Nigeria currently hosts around 20 co-location data centers, mainly concentrated in Lagos, with the market led by Rack Center, Africa Data Centers, MDXi (Equinix), and MTN, which together account for more than 70% of the country's IT power capacity.
In 2009, Britain's venture capital market began producing some of the country's biggest technology companies, creating new billion-pound businesses and attracting billions of pounds in private investment. But for Black founders, very little of that capital made it through.
Britain has produced hundreds of technology companies valued at more than $1 billion, but very few have been founded by Black entrepreneurs. That scarcity is what makes the stories of Zepz and Marshmallow significant, well beyond the valuations attached to them.
Migrants sent close to $865 billion globally in 2023, as global remittances reached an estimated $905 billion in 2024.
African startups raised roughly $545 million in January 2023; by January 2024, that had fallen to $83 million, an 84.8% year-on-year collapse, even accounting for one outsized acquisition that turns the prior-year number.
For years, the first chapter of Africa’s fintech story was about getting people to pay digitally. The next chapter is increasingly about what happens after the payment.
EU Black Founder Salary Report 2026 is live — full data tables, investor benchmarks, and country breakdowns.
Ouut angle: tracking the growth of regional tech ecosystems and the impact of cross-border investments.
Ouut angle: analyzing the flow of venture capital into Black-led series A and growth rounds.
Ouut angle: documenting the rise of Black-founded unicorns in London, Paris, and Berlin.
Secure your tickets
A Nigerian entrepreneur, technology and business journalist for TheOuut covering Africa and MENA's startup, fintech and broader technology ecosystems.
All articles
A content writer and news journalist with a focus on technology, startups, and new digital trends.
All articles
Newsletters
Microsoft, the leading software giant, announced a new program in early March this year to accelerate the growth of 10,000 African startups and fast-track investment in the continent’s startup ecosystem over the next five years. The opportunities are made available through Microsoft’s ATO, its Founders Hub on
The so-what and investor implications for all three are inside Pro Digest.
Unlock Pro
One of Africa’s fastest growing financial infrastructure providers, Fuze is in partnership with a blockchain company Miden in order to develop a privacy-first blockchain platform aimed at transforming digital
UAE-based credit scoring startup zypl.ai plans to expand its operations as it raises $5.5million in a bridge round led by Silicon Valley’s Carbide Ventures, alongside prominent investor
Roqqu has announced its product expansion by introducing a major product expansion that would reshape how users interact with digital assets, while going beyond simple trading into a broader financial
An international transfer platform, NALA is entering into the Nigeria market after securing an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and completing direct
