Africa’s two biggest, albeit sluggish, economies continue to dominate the Financial Times’ ranking of the fastest-growing African companies with more than half of the 130 companies listed from South Africa and Nigeria.
The presence of 79 businesses from the two nations — South Africa alone accounts for 51 — reflects the size and entrepreneurial depths of both economies. More negatively, it also hints at how difficult it has been for companies from smaller countries to build a continental presence in what is still a highly fragmented landscape.
The FT ranking, compiled in conjunction with research company Statista and now in its fourth year, is backward looking, ranking businesses according to the compound growth rate between 2020 and 2023.
Because many fast-growing companies are privately held and do not publicly disclose detailed financial data, a ranking such as this can never claim to be complete. But the screening process (see methodology, below), which requires senior executives to sign off on submitted figures, ensures that the list offers a meaningful snapshot and puts a focus on businesses not often in the spotlight.
Stéphane Bacquaert, managing partner at Adenia, a private equity firm specialising in Africa, said the fragmentation of Africa’s 54 economies, many of them tiny by global standards, presented real hurdles.
“You deal with different currencies, different legal environments and, despite the political efforts to try to integrate the regions, the reality is that you don’t operate the same way in Côte d’Ivoire as in Senegal,” he says. “Those are very two different markets, as are Kenya and Tanzania,” he adds, referring to east African neighbours with very different business environments.
Of the top three ranked companies, all Nigerian, only one, second-placed PalmPay, operates in more than three countries. Omniretail, an embedded finance and B2B enabling platform, which came in first place for the second year running, operates in only two countries outside its Nigerian base, Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Even TymeBank (ranked 29), a South African neobank that attracted a $150mn investment from Brazil’s Nubank in 2024 valuing the group at $1.5bn, has had to look outside the continent for growth. TymeBank has exported its model, which relies on recruiting customers from partner retail outlets, to the Philippines and Vietnam.
Leslie Maasdorp, chief executive of British International Investment, the UK’s development finance institution, says TymeBank — in which it has an investment — was proof that African businesses could “go global with world-leading and inclusive business models”. But Maasdorp also points out that just four African countries dominate in the fintech sector, with Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa accounting for 90 per cent of funding in 2024.
Iyin Aboyeji, co-founder of Future Africa, which invests in early-stage businesses, says it is not necessary to build a pan-African presence given the opportunities in key economies, particularly Nigeria and South Africa. “Most companies that have gone into unicorn status have done so without going through that pain,” he says, referring to businesses — two of which he co-founded — that achieved a market capitalisation of $1bn principally through exposure to Nigeria.
Ylva Lindberg, executive vice-president at Norfund, the Norwegian Investment Fund for developing countries, says the environment for investing in African start-ups has been difficult in the aftermath of Covid.
“Both the funding environment and the exit environment have been tough,” she says, citing sharp currency depreciations, particularly in Nigeria, but also in Kenya and Egypt, higher interest rates in advanced economies and rising sovereign debt burdens.
“Real risk in many emerging markets [including Africa], tends to be lower than the perceived risk,” she adds. “But when you see uncertainty rise, that’s when perceived risk becomes more prominent and home bias kicks in.”
Still, Norfund continued to make bets on the continent. This April it co-led a $20mn equity funding round in Omniretail, the Norwegian fund’s first foray into African fintech.
“Many microenterprises don’t have access to finance or distribution in any meaningful way,” Lindberg says, adding that Omniretail helped solve that problem for tens of thousands of customers. “A Nigerian woman turned up at Omniretail with a car, a driving licence and no job,” she says of one customer, who is now the chief executive of her own small business with seven employees and a fleet of five vehicles.
Not all fast-growing companies succeed. Several companies, including a few that have appeared on previous FT-Statista rankings, have run into trouble, or gone out of business. This highlights the difficulty of keeping momentum going, says Yasmin Kumi, CEO and founder of Africa Foresight Group, which seeks to transform medium-sized African businesses into global champions.
Jumia, once known hyperbolically as “the Amazon of Africa”, has sharply scaled back its expansion plans, a move reflected in a much diminished share price. Elsewhere, Gro Intelligence, once heralded as a pioneer in agritech and data analytics, went bust last year.
Greg Schwebig, founder and chief executive of Africaworks (ranked 5), which offers shared office space in eight African cities, agreed that the international environment had turned against the continent’s start-ups. “The whole start-up funding boom happened when there was excess liquidity in the developed world and cash moved to the developing world including Africa,” he says. “Now if you can get a T-bill at 5 per cent, people think why would I invest in Africa?”
Investors, he adds, also have to hedge for currency risk, either by picking companies with dollar revenue or ones that can quickly adjust prices. Africaworks had an asset-light model and is not dependent on external financing, he says.
Lindberg at Norfund says the FT-Statista ranking highlights that, despite the severe macro problems, there remains much innovation and problem-solving on the continent. “The entrepreneurial spirit in Nigeria in particular is formidable; there’s a sense that anything is possible.”
That extends to other countries in the ranking, such as Kenya (which has 12 of the fastest-growing companies), Mauritius (with nine) and Morocco (with seven). Companies from Ghana to Uganda and from Egypt to Zambia are also represented.
Fintech continues to dominate the list, accounting for one-fifth of the companies in the ranking.
The full report accompanying the rankings will publish on June 5, 2025.
Methodology
Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2025 lists 130 companies, ordered by the highest compound annual growth in revenues (CAGR) between 2020 and 2023.
Application phase
Through research in company databases and other public sources, Statista identified thousands of companies in Africa as potential candidates for the FT ranking. These companies were invited to participate in the research by post and email. The project was advertised online and in print, allowing all eligible companies to register via the websites created by Statista and the Financial Times.
The application phase ran from October 1, 2024 to January 31, 2025. The submitted revenue figures had to be certified by the chief financial officer, chief executive or another member of the company’s executive committee.
Criteria for inclusion in the list
To be included in the list of the Africa’s fastest-growing companies, a company had to meet the following criteria:
Revenue of at least US $100,000 generated in 2020 (1);
Revenue of at least US $1.5mn generated in 2023 (1);
An independent company (not a subsidiary or branch office of any kind);
Headquartered in an African country (2);
Revenue growth between 2020 and 2023 that was primarily organic (ie “internally” stimulated).
(1) Value equivalent in local currency for companies not reporting in US dollars. For the ranking a conversion of all figures to US dollars was performed using yearly average exchange rates for 2020 and 2023. The CAGR provided has been computed based on reporting currency.
(2) All countries in the African continent were eligible to participate.
Evaluation and quality assurance
All data reported by the companies was processed and checked by Statista. Missing data entries (employee numbers, addresses etc) were researched in detail. Companies that did not fulfil the criteria for inclusion in the ranking were omitted.
The minimum CAGR required to be included in the ranking this year was 8 per cent.
Disclaimer
The ranking of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2025 was created through a complex procedure. Although the search was very extensive, the ranking does not claim to be complete, as some companies did not want to make their figures public or did not participate for other reasons.
