Madica invests $200,000 in five African startups, enters Algeria and Cameroon

Madica, an Africa-focused pre-seed investment programme, has invested $200,000 each in five new African startups, including its first bets in Algeria and Cameroon, two markets that rarely appear in the continent’s funding announcements.

Each company also joins an 18-month programme that adds mentorship, executive coaching, funded immersion trips, and access to Madica’s investor network, the firm said.

The five deals take Madica’s portfolio to 18 companies across 10 markets since it launched in 2022 and bring its total deployed this year to $1.6 million after three investments in April. The new investments reflect Madica’s thesis directly, which is to find startups outside the big four markets (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt) and invest in them on the belief that some of Africa’s best startups can be found in overlooked markets.

“Our original thesis, which still holds, is that we would back founders across sectors, markets, and founder profiles that are typically underfunded on the continent,” said Emmanuel Adegboye, head of Madica, which is backed by Flourish Ventures, an $850 miliion global early-stage venture firm.

The new investments span four countries. Talenteo (Algeria), co-founded by Louai Djaffer, sells HR software to medium-sized and mid-market firms across Francophone Africa. Paysika (Cameroon), co-founded by Roger Nengwe and Stezen Bisselou, is a digital neobank issuing virtual and physical cards to consumers and small businesses in Central Africa.

ChipMango (Nigeria), co-founded by Ola Fadiran and Jovan Andjelich, designs chips, runs engineering training, and builds edge AI products. Delta Oil (Egypt), co-founded by Serag Moussa, connects used cooking oil collectors to international buyers of renewable fuel feedstock. Bekia (Egypt), founded by Alaa Afifi, pays households and businesses for recyclable waste and supplies industrial buyers.

“We were set up to invest as a pan-African fund, and we are constantly looking for opportunities across the continent,” he told TechCabal from Dakar, where he is spending time studying a market Madica has yet to invest in.

Startups can apply directly, and Adegboye said those applications get the same attention even when Madica has never worked in the market, never met the founder, and has no referral to lean on. Madica’s team also spends time in specific markets, building relationships with ecosystem leaders who point them towards founders and help with due diligence. The rest comes through referrals from other funds. Talenteo, he said, came from someone in the Algerian ecosystem who knew the team well.

“Algeria is not necessarily an exception,” Adegboye said. “It is an offshoot of the work we have been doing building relationships in those markets.” He expects to give the same answer when Madica announces a first investment in Senegal or another new market.

Madica’s cheque to ChipMango was announced before this, when the company disclosed a $1.9 million seed round led by Atlantica Ventures in early September. Adegboye told TechCabal this week that Madica now co-invests in most deals, having learnt that $200,000 on its own rarely carries an African startup across the widening gap between funding rounds.

“There are a lot of opportunities in untapped markets and untapped sectors on the continent,” Adegboye said. “My experience is that the opportunities exist, and I would love for more investors to pay attention to them.”