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Africa · Country profile

Nigeria

Africa · Pop. 232.7M · #43 startup ecosystem by EV

A public taster of the full Nigeria ecosystem on Dealroom — request a demo for live deal flow, founder pedigrees, AI-talent maps, and the full cap table for every company below.

$18.2B+66%
Combined startup EV
$227.5M
VC invested (last 12mo)
919
Tracked startups
0.03
Unicorns per 1M people
🦄 Unicorns
6
6 live · +1 new in 2025 (incl. 0 new decacorns)
💎 Decacorns
0
🐎 Thoroughbreds
5
Top 1% growth · $500M+

Adjacent ecosystems by EV

Startup hubs

Inside Nigeria: top 1 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value of all tracked startups headquartered there.

By enterprise value
1 Lagos $16.2B
By unicorn count
1 Lagos 6

Startup funnel

Nigeria's power-law funnel

From every VC-backed startup down to the biggest scale-ups. Conversion rates show what fraction of one tier graduate into the next. Capital figures (where shown) are total VC deployed at that stage.

VC-backed startups
915
Colts ($25M+ revenue) $49.4M deployed
9
0.98% of prior tier
Unicorns ($1B+ valuation)
6
67% of prior tier

Enterprise value · 2015–2025

Nigeria grew 15.1× since 2015

Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in Nigeria that's still operating today, totalled by founding-year cohort.

0 $5B $10B $15B $20B Nigeria · $18.2B 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025

Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems

How Nigeria stacks up

Peers chosen from the same Africa cluster within ±70% of Nigeria's combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size for the wider continent — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.

Combined enterprise value
$18.8B
Nigeria
$18.2B
$12.3B
$8.9B
$3.1B
EV growth (5-yr ×) vs current EV

Top overview

Africa ecosystems — combined view

Top ecosystems in Africa ranked by combined EV. Nigeria's row is highlighted.

# Ecosystem Combined EV 5-yr EV growth Unicorns VC invested Tracked startups
1 South Africa $18.8B 8.2× 2 $406.5M 969
2 Nigeria $18.2B 12.5× 6 $227.5M 919
3 Egypt $12.3B 9.6× 4 $416.9M 834
4 Kenya $8.9B 10.2× 0 $269.6M 520
5 Seychelles $3.1B 1 $15.8M 46
6 Senegal $2B 98.9× 1 $13.5M 52
7 Mauritius $1.9B 29.4× 0 $19.5M 42
8 Ghana $1.6B 5.3× 0 $146.9M 193
9 Tunisia $1.1B 37.2× 0 $5.1M 110
10 Rwanda $705M 5.8× 0 $13.2M 57
11 Morocco $653.2M 8.4× 0 $20.2M 146
12 Benin $601M 0 $100.1M 20

Patent intelligence

Nigeria startup IP portfolio: 25 patent families

Granted patent families assigned to startups headquartered in Nigeria. Aggregated across the country's hub-level filings — Bay Area, Boston, etc. roll up under the United States row, the same way Tokyo and Osaka roll up under Japan.

Granted patent families
25
Filed by tracked startups headquartered in the country.
0.11 patents per million residents · #66 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Lagos 25

Premium analytics

What we don't show on this page (yet)

Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full Nigeria dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where Nigeria's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
Unlock on Dealroom
Founder origins
Where Nigeria's startup founders come from
By country of origin
Per capita
Top universities
Top alumni-factory companies
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AI talent
Top employers of AI talent in Nigeria
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in Nigeria
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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