IN SHORT: Africa’s private capital market hit $16.1 billion in Q1 2026, its strongest quarterly value in recent memory, driven almost entirely by two landmark Nigerian transactions. The MTN-IHS Towers deal ($6.2bn) and Dangote Refinery debt financing ($4bn) together accounted for 63% of all disclosed deal value. Deal volume fell to 172 transactions from 201 a year ago, signalling a decisive shift toward fewer, larger, more strategic bets.
Africa’s private capital market recorded $16.1 billion in total disclosed deal value in the first quarter of 2026, a figure that masks a structural story: two Nigerian mega-deals dominated the quarter, while the broader deal environment continued to narrow and consolidate around institutional capital and infrastructure-scale transactions.
The findings come from Stears’ Q1 2026 Private Capital in Africa Activity Report, published today, which tracked deal flow across the continent.
- The MTN-IHS Towers acquisition ($6.2bn) and the Dangote Petroleum Refinery syndicated debt package ($4bn) combined to represent approximately 63% of the quarter’s total disclosed value. Strip those two out and the underlying market looks significantly more subdued. Stears framed the concentration as reflecting continued investor appetite for opportunities that address critical infrastructure gaps in Africa’s largest economy.
- Deal volume fell to 172 transactions from 188 in Q4 2025 and 201 in Q1 2025. Stears explicitly characterised the decline not as weakness but as a shift in capital allocation: investors are deploying less frequently but at larger scale, concentrating on companies with demonstrated product-market fit and the ability to absorb significant capital.
- M&A accounted for nearly 25% of all transactions, a continued high share. Notable M&A deals included the IHS acquisition, Fera Science’s acquisition of Qotho Minerals in South Africa, Flutterwave’s acquisition of Mono (Nigerian open banking infrastructure), and Moniepoint’s acquisition of Orda.
- Multilateral development banks came to the fore, with Afreximbank leading MDB activity with 12 transactions — tied to the launch of its Accelerator Programme providing seed capital to eight African startups including OnePort 365 and Zowasel. Afreximbank also participated in the Dangote debt deal and a $50 million term loan for Spiro, the East African electric mobility company.
- AI startups are beginning to register in deal flow. Cybervergent and KNOT Technologies secured funding in Q1, and the report noted a gradual broadening of Africa’s innovation landscape beyond fintech’s traditional dominance.
- Afreximbank also underwrote $1.75 billion in a syndicated investment in Angola’s Sonangol, underscoring the bank’s expanding role as a continent-wide capital provider for strategic resource assets.
Stears noted that the concentration of value in a small number of large transactions underscores sustained investor appetite for critical infrastructure opportunities in Nigeria in particular, even as early-stage and mid-market deal volumes remain compressed across the continent.
The Bigger Picture: A $16.1 billion quarter sounds impressive. It is — but 63% of it is two deals, both in Nigeria, both in infrastructure. The rest of Africa’s private capital market is still grinding through a post-2022 compression cycle. The signal for investors is not that Africa has bounced back — it is that Africa’s largest economy is attracting institutional-scale capital at infrastructure scale, while the ecosystem below that level remains tight. The next 12 months will reveal whether the Dangote IPO and MTN integration catalyse broader capital formation, or whether Nigeria continues to dominate by sheer gravitational pull while other markets wait.
Source: BusinessDay NG
