Top 20 Sports Startup Investors in Africa in April 2025
A list of 20 angel investors and VC (Venture Capital) funds that invest in Sports startups based in Africa. We rank investors based on the number of investments they made in Sports companies from Africa. We update this investor list every month.Top 20 Sports Startup Investors in Africa in April 2025
Investor | Sports Africa investments |
---|---|
MNF Ventures | 2 |
Gray Matters Capital | 1 |
4Di Capital | 1 |
Mizizi Africa Consumer Holdings | 1 |
4DX Ventures | 1 |
Knife Capital | 1 |
Umoja Rubber Products | 1 |
Silverbacks Holdings | 1 |
AfricInvest | 1 |
NEXT176 | 1 |
Robert Herjavec | 1 |
Newtown Partners | 1 |
Johnson & Johnson Foundation | 1 |
Seed South Capital | 1 |
EchoVC Partners | 1 |
Nour Nouf Ventures | 1 |
Ventures Platform | 1 |
Justin Stanford | 1 |
Flat6Labs Tunisia | 1 |
Tofino Capital | 1 |
MNF Ventures is a venture capital fund based in Morocco, investing in Seed, Pre-Series A and Series A startups. Tickets size can go up to USD 1M. We invest in tech startups operating in Fintech/Insurtech, EdTech, Regtech, HealthTech, Biotech, EnergyTech Cybersecurity, SaaS...
Startups have either to be based in Morocco, or be based worldwideif at least one of the founders is a Moroccan citizen.
MNF Ventures manages Maroc Numeric Fund and Maroc Numeric Fund II.
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Investment focus
- Online Portals, FinTech, Enterprise Software
- Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Morocco, France, Canada
Portfolio highlights
- Logidoo — Logidoo is a digital logistics marketplace-designed company that markets shuttles through smart logistics. The company's platform, which provides rapid, dependable, secure, and economical logistics, allows users to compare offers for sending and receiving items and to track parcels in real-time.
- ZSystems — ZSystems is a transformative super app designed to redefine B2B trade.
- Upfund — Upfund is a real estate company that provides reliable data on office, retail, and business premises. Upfund is a digital solution designed to respond to most commercial real estate business issues. They develop tools perfectly adapted to clients' requests in a remarkable time. Founded in 2022 and is located in Paris, France.
We are an impact investor in the global south. Our deep roots in microfinance and education finance have demonstrated profit with purpose. We focus on self-development and skilling technology for women to find meaningful work.
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Investment focus
- Education, Health Care, E-Learning
- Seed, Series A, Funding Round
- India, United States, Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- OYE — From Latin America to the world, we’re building a community to make emotional wellness part of everyday life.
- Shamba Pride — Shamba Pride is a revolutionary Rural Distribution system for African Farmers, it provides online-to-offline DigiShop marketplace.
- Applied Cognition — Applied Cognition is developing a novel medical device and platform for translational measurement of a newly discovered biology of the brain whose failure has been shown to cause neurodegeneration in preclinical models. We will be the first to non-invasively, continuously measure this biology in humans enabling us to develop treatments that stop or reverse the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
4Di Capital is an independent seed- and early-stage technology venture capital firm based in Cape Town, South Africa.Nurture capital is the term that best describes 4Di Capitalâ€:tm:s purpose and philosophy.We understand that in the early days of any business, support, mentoring and access to networks is just as important as seed capital.Using tried and tested international venture capital best practices, adapted for local use, we believe in entrepreneur-friendly finance without frills, and in working as a team with our investments to achieve their true potential.4Di Capital Early-Stage Technology Fund 1 targets startup investment opportunities with high growth potential at the seed- and early-stages in the mobile, enterprise software and web sectors.We look for founder teams with hungry passion, commitment, domain expertise and deep insights into the large market problems they wish to solve with their technology solutions.
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Investment focus
- Software, Financial Services, Mobile
- Seed, Series A, Series B
- South Africa, United States, Uganda
Portfolio highlights
- Maxe AI — AI investment Assistant for all investors. AI Portfolios tracker of stocks bonds exchanges futures. all in one to track mutual funds.
- Rather.chat — Rather.chat offers a platform that facilitates meaningful connections between businesses and their customers through WhatsApp. This service is designed to make customer interactions more personal and efficient, allowing for real-time communication. By leveraging the widespread use of WhatsApp, Rather.chat aims to enhance the customer serviceexperience, making it easier for businesses to address inquiries, resolve issues, and maintain engagement with their audience. The focus is on creating a seamless bridge for dialogue that respects the convenience and preferences of the modern consumer, who increasingly favors instant messaging over traditional forms of communication.
- Happy Pay — Happy Pay is a credit scoring system developing company. The company integrates an autonomous artificial intelligence technology system with the merchant's platform to increase their average basket size and customer conversion metrics, providing users with buy now, and pay later services.
A world-class house of African-inspired lifestyle brands
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Investment focus
- Sports, Fashion, Outdoors
- Seed
- Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- Enda Sportswear — Kenyan running shoes that reward a natural midfoot landing and match the way runners train. Proudly made in Kenya and certified Climate Neutral. The most socially conscious running shoes in the world.
4DX Ventures is a Pan-Africa Focused Venture Capital Firm. Our mission is to connect people, ideas, and capital to create a vibrant African community.
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Investment focus
- Financial Services, Information Technology, Logistics
- Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Egypt, United States, Nigeria
Portfolio highlights
- Taager — Taager is a social e-commerce platform enabling online merchants with end-to-end logistics.
- MAKA — MAKA is a community commerce platform for fashion and beauty, enabling everyone to discover their style, feel represented.
- Hohm Energy — We make the process of going solar simple. Generate your free, custom solar proposal and get matched with an accredited solar provider in under 5 mins.
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Investment focus
- Software, Information Technology, Manufacturing
- Funding Round, Series A, Seed
- South Africa, United States, Sweden
Portfolio highlights
- Octiv — Turbocharge your fitness business, grow your community and build your brand with Octiv's leading Gym Management Software.
- Outsized — Independent talent for enterprise clients and consulting firms in Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East.
- Simera Sense — Simera Sense develops camera control electronics for optical payload and Cubesat imager solutions.
Umoja Rubber Products is an investment Firm.
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Investment focus
- Sports, Fashion, Outdoors
- Seed
- Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- Enda Sportswear — Kenyan running shoes that reward a natural midfoot landing and match the way runners train. Proudly made in Kenya and certified Climate Neutral. The most socially conscious running shoes in the world.
Silverbacks Holdings is a Mauritius-based private investment firm established in 2019, focusing on Africa-related companies in underserved industries such as sports, technology, media, and lifestyle. The firm aims for returns averaging 3x to 5x on its investments and has achieved six profitable exits since its inception. Its portfolio includes over 240 companies across Africa, collectively valued at over $10 billion. Notable investments include the Cape Town Tigers basketball team, Forever7 Entertainment, and Moove, a global mobility fintech company.
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Investment focus
- Sports
- Funding Round
Portfolio highlights
- NERGii — NERGii is a sports technology business that makes cutting-edge insoles for shoes that improve performance.
- Instadiet — Instadiet helps to lower your blood sugar level to the normal range without medication or surgery. It controls blood sugar without medication and includes reducing the chances of heart disease, dispensing with medications, reducing cumulative sugar, and weight loss.
- African Warriors Fighting Championship — African Warriors Fighting Championship is Africa's leading promoter of traditional combat sports: Dambe and Wrestling.
AfricInvest was founded in 1994 and is part of Integra Group, an investment and financial services company based in Tunisia.Uniquely positioned as one of the most experienced private equity investors on the continent, AfricInvest has dedicated investment teams focused on North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, and employs 66 professionals based inseven offices.AfricInvest manages USD1 billion across 16 funds and benefits from strong, long-term support from both local and international investors, including leading development finance institutions in the United States and Europe.Having co-founded the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA) as well as the Middle East North Africa Private Equity Association (MENAPEA) and the Euromed Capital Forum, the firm is an active promotor of the private equity industry in the region.Since 1994, AfricInvest has invested in 135 companies across 25 African countries in a variety of high growth sectors and maintains a broad network of high quality executives across Africa, offering extensive expertise in key growth industries, including financial services, agribusiness, consumer/retail, education and healthcare.
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Investment focus
- Financial Services, Manufacturing, FinTech
- Funding Round, Private Equity, Series A
- Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- Bizao — Bizao helps companies accept all local payment methods across Africa. We build powerful APIs and smart financial flows wich greatly simplify the challenge of accepting Mobile Money, Visa/Mastercard and Airtime payment. We power all types of businesses: local retailers, online merchants, international digital content providers, money transferoperators, microfinance institutions. Our objective: accelerate mobile payment adoption in order to support economic development across the continent
- Turaco — Turaco develops simplified insurance and credit solutions through mobile technology to solve the healthcare financing needs. Turaco has simplified insurance products and also provides on-demand health loans, allowing customers to get healthcare at affordable monthly premiums.
- Moove — Moove is a mobility fintech that provides revenue-based vehicle financing to mobility entrepreneurs, democratizing vehicle ownership globally. The company embeds its alternative credit-scoring technology onto ride-hailing, logistics, and last-mile/instant delivery platforms, which allows access to proprietary performance and revenue analyticsof mobility entrepreneurs to underwrite loans.
Creating disruptive and sustainable businesses to positively impact 1 Billion lives.
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Investment focus
- Fitness, Software, Wellness
- Seed
- South Africa
Portfolio highlights
- JOBJACK — The JOBJACK platform automates the entry-level recruitment process, so hiring your deskless staff is easy, quick and simple. Our proprietary entry-level psychometric assessments, along with built-in credit and risk checks, help our customers identify the right talent to grow their businesses.
- Kena Health — Talk to a nurse, doctor or mental health professional on your smartphone with the Kena Health App. Affordable primary healthcare for South Africans. Download Now.
Robert Herjavec is the CEO at CYDERES.
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Investment focus
- Health Care, Pet, Consumer Electronics
- Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
- United States, Nigeria
Portfolio highlights
- FreePower — FreePower is the next gen advanced wireless charging technology enabling product & solution innovators to create the charging experience their customers will love
- Sweetkiwi — Home of the best tasting, mouth-watering, low fat, healthy froyo. Healthy Never Tasted Better!
- THEMAGIC5 — THEMAGIC5 has reinvented the swimming goggle. THEMAGIC5 swim goggles fit perfectly. They are comfortable to wear and prevent leaking - custom fitted to you.
Newtown Partners is a venture capital firm that actively invests in emerging, disruptive technology startups.
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Investment focus
- Logistics, Health Care, Information Technology
- Seed, Series A, Funding Round
- South Africa, Ghana, Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- MDaaS Global — At MDaaS Global, we build and operate modern, tech-enabled diagnostic centres in clinically-underserved communities, starting in Nigeria. Our big goal is to create affordable healthcare solutions for Africa's next billion.
- Chefaa — Chefaa is a GPS-enabled pharmacy benefits platform connecting patients & pharmacies nation-wide to help patients manage all their pharmacy needs. Chefaa uses big data, data ming & machine learning
- Waspito — We are the platform that engages Africa into the conversation and action to drive affordable and accessible quality healthcare across the continent.
The Johnson & Johnson Foundation is a registered charitable organization that reflects the commitment of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies to keeping people well at every age and every stage of life by blending heart, science, and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.
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Investment focus
- Health Care, Fitness, Software
- Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Ghana, Zambia, United States
Portfolio highlights
- Dawa Health — DawaMom is a standardized mobile clinic that delivers maternal and neonatal health through a digital health platform leveraging a wide network of trained 1st level clinicians and community health workers (CHWs) for emerging markets.
- NextStep — NextStep is an information technology company that provides training and job placement for workers via mobile application platform. It features a mobile and web-based platform that enables its users to manage staff accordingly on their accurate positions. The company was founded in 2018 and headquartered in Seatle, Washington.
- Redbird — Millions of Africans live with chronic diseases without a convenient way to manage their health. And every year, millions more develop chronic disease – at a rate of two times the world average. Unlike those with acute disease, chronic disease patients require not just treatment, but also lifelong health monitoring to remain healthy andproductive. African chronic diseases patients need a convenient way to manage their conditions, and the current, top-down approach to healthcare cannot cope.That’s where we come in. At Redbird, we supply pharmacies with everything they need to offer rapid diagnostic services for chronic disease, helping them to solve this need by establishing them as the most convenient place for patients to manage their health.
Seed South Capital invest in early-stage companies, transforming these into B-BBEE compliant business enterprises, forging a new class of youthful entrepreneurs.
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Investment focus
- Sports, Content, Social Media
- Seed
- South Africa
Portfolio highlights
- myFanPark — myFanPark is a South African celebrity engagement platform, to share videos.
EchoVC Partners is a seed and early-stage venture capital firm focused on financing and cross-pollinating leading technologies, teams, business models, and knowledge across North America, Africa, and SE Asia. The average investment size ranges from $25,000 to several million dollars depending on the stage of opportunity and capital needs of thebusiness.
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Investment focus
- Information Technology, Software, E-Commerce
- Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- United States, Nigeria, Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- Shuttlers — Shuttlers is a platform that offers mobility solutions by providing scheduled bus-sharing services for the professionals within the region.
- Snowstorm — Official site of the Snowstorm Network
- Senga Technologies — Welcome to Senga, custom-built, with love, for businesses shipping in Africa.
We inspire to build societies where knowledge empowers every individual to realize their full potential to contribute to the greater good and to be responsible for future generations.
Investment in startup business, Community Services, Shared Offices.
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Investment focus
- Information Technology, Financial Services, Health Care
- Seed, Funding Round, Convertible Note
- Saudi Arabia, United States, Egypt
Portfolio highlights
- YNMO — YNMO is the first Arabic/English digital solution that aims to improve the quality of care and educational services for individuals with special needs by allowing service providers such as schools, centers & clinics to design and monitor individualized treatment plans.
- Safanad — Safanad is a global holding company focusing on key investment platforms in Education, Healthcare, Digital Infrastructure, and Real Estate sectors, delivering strong risk-adjusted returns through partnership and operational excellence.
- Affinity — Affinity is a financial solutions company that provides financial inclusion, advisory, and literacy services.
We back founders building the future of Africa. We invest in companies that solve for non-consumption, plug infrastructural gaps and democratise prosperity in Africa, by eliminating the barriers for access and reducing the costs of delivering goods and services.
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Investment focus
- Financial Services, FinTech, Internet
- Seed, Pre-Seed, Funding Round
- Nigeria, United States, Kenya
Portfolio highlights
- Raenest — Access Virtual Accounts, Invoicing, Multi-Currency Payouts, Auto Payroll, Accounting Integrations, and Virtual & Physical cards within minutes.
- Maad — Maad is Francophone Africa's fastest-growing B2B marketplace, based in Dakar, Senegal. Our tech-driven solution allows retailers to order products from our one-stop shop and benefit from working capital loans
- Juicyway — Juice is a developer of a payment network platform for cross-border business payments for businesses and individuals. It facilitates financial transactions between parties regardless of location to allow enterprises to participate in international trade and the exchange of goods and services.
Justin is a 31-year old entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist from Cape Town, South Africa. He is founder, MD, board member, advisor, or investor to a wide variety of companies in the global technology sector.Having grown up on a farm, he decided not to complete high-school and instead made the move to the city of Cape Town, topursue his dreams of being an Internet entrepreneur.Despite years of struggles and false starts in the wake of the dotcom crash in 2001, he ultimately went on to successfully launch and grow a pan-African Internet based software company from a garage in the suburbs of Cape Town.Have founded his first startup attempt at the age of 18, Justin has been involved in tech startups and entrepreneurial endeavours ever since.He is today the co-founder and MD of 4Di Group, a diversified investment management group and family office, and co-founding General Partner of early-stage technology venture capital firm 4Di Capital, as well as an active angel investor.As co-founder and Steering Committee Chairman of the Silicon Cape Initiative in 2009, designed to highlight and foster South Africa's nascent emerging tech startup ecosystem, Justin fully believes in South Africa’s potential as a global technology innovation hub.In 2011, he was listed by the Mail & Guardian for the 'Top 200 Young South Africans', and in 2013, listed by Forbes for '30 Under 30: Africa's Best Young Entrepreneurs'.
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Investment focus
- FinTech, Financial Services, Security
- Seed, Angel, Series A
- South Africa
Portfolio highlights
- FitKey — FitKey is about helping you find and manage the fitness life that makes you happy, through discovering new classes, studios, and fitness activities. With easy online and mobile booking, FitKey keeps your routine interesting.
- TaxTim — Originally funded by Google in 2011, TaxTim is Africa's answer to Making Tax Easy. Answer simple questions one-by-one, in a friendly automated chat, and your tax return is done in minutes. TaxTim has 40% market share of the tax base in South Africa (~4.5m), and has deployed localised versions in Namibia and Nigeria as JVs with PwC previously.TaxTim is integrated with the local revenue service (SARS) for instant electronic tax submissions, and partners with some of SA's largest consumer brands - Airbnb, Momentum, Sanlam, Old Mutual, FNB eBucks - to provide tax services for free or at discount. TaxTim has several business models including B2C, B2B and B2B2C. TaxTim is a compelling and popular consumer brand, with a fully-developed, profitable broker/financial product leads ecosystem.
- Ekaya.com — Ekaya exists to make renting simpler, safer and more connected - for everyone.
Flat6Labs is the MENA region’s leading seed and early stage venture capital firm, currently running the most renowned startup programs in the region. Annually, Flat6Labs invests in more than 100 innovative and technology-driven startups enabling thousands of passionate entrepreneurs to achieve their daring ambitions and ultimately becoming theirinstitutional co-founders.
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Investment focus
- E-Commerce, Retail, Education
- Pre-Seed, Seed
- Tunisia, France
Portfolio highlights
- Yaz — Yaz is a B2B wholesale e-Commerce web and mobile app that offers branded goods and services top up for retailers.
- Birdhouce — Birdhouce is a direct to consumer furniture startup that provides home storage. They develop an online 3d product configurator that makes the customer a designer from the comfort of their home. Their design categories include a dining room, living room, bedroom, hallway, office, kitchen, and kids room.
- Tiktak PRO — Tiktak PRO provides back office management services. They also provide hosting, updating, and certificate services. Additionally, they also provide commercial activity and technical support services.
Tofino Capital is an early stage investor in emerging market technology companies.
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Investment focus
- SaaS, B2B, Enterprise Software
- Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- South Africa, Egypt, Finland
Portfolio highlights
- Adbot — ...<div class=""><a class="text-link font-weight-bold text-light text-link--blue pt-4" href="https://adbot.co.za/">Read More</a></div>
- Kena Health — Talk to a nurse, doctor or mental health professional on your smartphone with the Kena Health App. Affordable primary healthcare for South Africans. Download Now.
- Circadian Technologies GmbH — Circadian Technologies accelerates the energy transition in frontier markets with a SaaS business model, empowering solar developers & energy service companies to reduce operating costs and grow revenue with a data driven platform and proprietary IoT hardware.Circadian transforms the entire value chain of its customers by uniquely providingan end-to-end solution to better design, finance, operate and maintain decentralized renewable energy systems for commercial & industrial sites.
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Investors in Africa by industry
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