2025 Africa Venture Capital Exit and Liquidity Report
Understand Who Exits, How They Exit, and What That Means for Capital in Africa
Produced in partnership with
Ventures Platform, the
2025 Africa Venture Capital Exit and Liquidity Report presents the most comprehensive analysis of VC-backed exits ever conducted on the African continent. Drawing on 181 verified transactions spanning 2011 to 2026 and measured through the proprietary
Stears–Ventures Platform Liquidity Index (SVL Index), this report gives fund managers, LPs, DFIs, and investors a structured view of how reliably capital is returned in African venture capital.
What's Inside the Report?
- The SVL Index: A first-of-its-kind composite measure of African venture liquidity, separating exit volume from exit quality across buyer breadth, route diversity, and fresh capital generation.
- 181 Verified Exits Analysed: Pan-African exit data spanning 2011 to 2026, covering trade sales, secondaries, and public listings across all major regions and sectors.
- Regional Exit Dynamics: West Africa leads with 48% of all exits and the highest Liquidity Quality Index score on the continent, while North Africa distinguishes itself through strong international buyer participation driven by MENA integration.
- Sectoral Breakdown: Financial Services accounts for 30% of all exits, nearly as large as the next two sectors combined. While Energy & Utilities reveals a structural mismatch between investment activity and exit readiness.
- Exit Route Analysis: Trade sales dominate at 73% of all exits, while secondaries have grown from 7% to 23% between 2021 and 2024, tracking a global shift in how venture liquidity is generated.
- Fund-Level Playbook: Practical guidance on portfolio construction, secondary strategy, LP alignment, duration calibration, and carry structure for managers operating in Africa's current liquidity environment.
Why Read This Report?
- Actionable Intelligence: Move beyond exit counts to understand the structure of liquidity, which routes are reliable, which buyers are active, and where the system remains fragile.
- Strategic Portfolio Decisions: Identify which sectors, geographies, and exit archetypes align with your fund's timeline, LP composition, and return expectations in the African context.
- Proprietary Data Depth: Leverage the SVL Index; the only composite measure of African venture liquidity, built on a verified dataset no other platform has assembled.
- Risk Calibration: Understand how FX dynamics, regulatory fragmentation, and buyer concentration affect not just returns, but when and whether exits become viable at all.
- Benchmark Your Position: Compare your portfolio's exit exposure against continental patterns across region, sector, route, and buyer type; and identify where your assumptions may need recalibrating.
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