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Africa · Country profile

Senegal

Africa · Pop. 18.5M

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

$2B+151%
Combined startup EV
$13.5M
VC invested (last 12mo)
52
Tracked startups
#59/ 67
Unicorns per 1M people · world rank
🦄 Unicorns
1
1 live · +0 new in 2025 (incl. 0 new decacorns)
💎 Decacorns
0
🐎 Thoroughbreds
0
Top 1% growth · $500M+

Enterprise value · 2015–2025

Senegal grew 1315.2× since 2015

Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in Senegal that's still operating today — public and private companies combined, totalled by founding-year cohort.

0 $500M $1B $1.5B $2B Senegal · $2B 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025

Adjacent ecosystems by EV

Startup hubs

Inside Senegal: top 1 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value, paired with their 5-year growth multiplier.

By enterprise value
1 Dakar $2B
By 5-yr EV growth
1 Dakar 99×

Startup funnel

Senegal's power-law funnel

From the first cheque written to a $10B+ outcome. Each arrow shows what fraction of companies at one stage graduate to the next, tracked by founding cohort.

Pre-Seed
17
Seed
6
Series A
7
Series B
1
Series C
1
Unicorn
1

* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.

Notable companies

Top private companies in Senegal

Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.

Unicorns $1B+ valuation 1
Wave Mobile Money

Academia

Senegal's academic flywheel

Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Senegal.

University-linked startup formation
3
Total alumni-founded companies
3
Of which startups (<$15M raised)

Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems

How Senegal stacks up

Peers chosen from the same Africa cluster within ±70% of Senegal'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
$3.1B
Senegal
$2B
$1.9B
$1.6B
$1.1B
$705M
$653.2M
$601M
EV growth (5-yr ×) vs current EV

Top overview

Africa ecosystems — combined view

Top ecosystems in Africa ranked by combined EV. Senegal'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

Senegal startup IP portfolio: 3 patent families

Granted patent families assigned to startups headquartered in Senegal. 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
3
Filed by tracked startups headquartered in the country.
0.16 patents per million residents · #64 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Dakar 3

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 Senegal dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where Senegal's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
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Capital autonomy
Senegal's domestic vs foreign capital mix
% domestic VC by stage
Cross-border lead investors
Sovereign-fund participation
Foreign-LP exposure
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Recent momentum
Senegal's VC investment trajectory by stage
2024 vs 2025 by stage
Round-size trends
Stage-conversion deltas
Quarterly velocity
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Founder origins
Where Senegal'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 Senegal
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in Senegal
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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