Africa accounted for its highest-ever share of global blockchain deal activity in 2025 despite attracting less than 1% of worldwide blockchain funding, highlighting a widening disconnect between investor participation on the continent and the amount of capital being deployed.
That conclusion comes from the latest Africa Blockchain Report, published by CV VC and sponsored by Absa, which argues that the continent’s blockchain ecosystem is maturing even as larger international investors continue to direct most funding elsewhere. According to the report, Africa completed 28 blockchain funding transactions during 2025, only two fewer than the previous year, while funding fell 26.6% year over year. Globally, venture investment in blockchain increased 28.8% to $15.4 billion despite deal volumes declining by almost one-third.
The contrast suggests that investors continue to find blockchain companies across Africa but remain reluctant to commit larger amounts of capital, even as regulatory frameworks improve and commercial adoption expands.
Africa Produces Deals But Not Mega Rounds
One of the year’s largest transactions illustrates both the progress and the challenge facing the sector.
Kredete, founded by Nigerian entrepreneur Adeola Adedewe, raised a $22 million Series A round to expand a platform that allows Africans living abroad to build credit histories through remittance activity. The transaction became the largest disclosed blockchain funding round in Africa during 2025, yet would rank as a relatively modest financing compared with many blockchain investments completed in North America, Europe or Asia.
Across the continent, blockchain represented 5.3% of all venture capital invested during 2025 and accounted for 6.9% of venture transactions. Globally, blockchain represented only 3.0% of venture funding and 3.6% of deals.
Those figures suggest blockchain occupies a larger position within Africa’s broader startup ecosystem than it does in many developed markets, despite receiving substantially less capital overall.
Real-World Financial Problems Drive Adoption
Unlike many developed markets where blockchain investment has increasingly focused on infrastructure, tokenization or speculative digital assets, much of Africa’s blockchain activity is addressing practical financial and commercial problems.
The report found investment concentrated around cross-border payments, stablecoin-based lending, digital payment infrastructure, crypto-enabled trade finance, supply chain financing, exchange technology and tokenized real-world assets.
Many of these use cases reflect structural challenges that have existed across African markets for years, including expensive international payments, fragmented financial infrastructure and limited access to credit.
Blockchain therefore becomes less about replacing existing systems and more about building financial infrastructure where gaps already exist.
Applications are also expanding beyond financial services into agriculture, healthcare, digital identity, property registration and fraud detection, illustrating how distributed ledger technology is increasingly being deployed as business infrastructure rather than simply cryptocurrency infrastructure.
Funding Still Concentrated At Seed Stage
While entrepreneurial activity continues to expand, the funding profile remains heavily weighted toward early-stage companies.
The median blockchain funding round reached just $1.9 million during 2025, compared with an average deal size of $3.2 million, reflecting a market where relatively few larger financings distort overall averages.
Nearly half of all blockchain funding and almost half of all transactions involved seed-stage companies.
The figures suggest early-stage investors remain willing to finance experimentation and product development, while growth-stage companies continue to face a shortage of larger institutional capital needed to scale internationally.
That gap has become one of the defining characteristics of Africa’s blockchain investment landscape.
Regulation Is Expanding Across The Continent
The investment environment has nevertheless become more supportive over the past two years as governments introduce dedicated digital asset frameworks.
According to the report, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Morocco, Zambia and Ethiopia have all made progress toward implementing regulatory regimes covering digital assets, stablecoins and licensing requirements for service providers.
In total, fifteen African countries now have either legislation, regulatory frameworks or licensing systems governing virtual asset businesses, although implementation continues to evolve across several jurisdictions.
The broader regulatory trend mirrors developments taking place in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where policymakers increasingly seek to regulate digital assets within established financial frameworks rather than prohibit their development altogether.
For institutional investors, clearer regulation can reduce operational uncertainty and improve confidence when evaluating larger investments.
A Young Population And Financial Inclusion Continue To Support Growth
The report argues that Africa’s demographic profile strengthens the long-term investment case.
The continent has one of the world’s youngest populations while also demonstrating an established record of adopting new financial technologies, particularly mobile payments.
Mobile money platforms transformed retail payments across much of Africa long before similar systems became common in developed markets, leading many investors to view blockchain as another technology capable of accelerating financial inclusion where traditional infrastructure remains limited.
Yet despite those structural advantages, Africa attracted only 0.58% of global blockchain venture funding during 2025.
That disparity between entrepreneurial activity, regulatory progress and available capital underpins the report’s central argument: investor allocations have not kept pace with developments across the continent.
Capital May Follow As Markets Mature
Whether that imbalance persists will depend on several factors.
Growth-stage funding often follows regulatory certainty, successful exits and institutional participation rather than early-stage innovation alone. Africa has demonstrated growing entrepreneurial activity and increasing regulatory engagement, but relatively few blockchain companies have yet reached the scale capable of attracting the largest global venture funds.
As stablecoins, tokenized assets and blockchain-based payment infrastructure become increasingly important across international finance, investors may begin viewing African blockchain companies less as frontier market opportunities and more as participants addressing globally relevant financial infrastructure challenges.
The report therefore presents a picture that differs from headline funding totals alone. Africa is not lacking blockchain innovation or entrepreneurial activity. Instead, it appears to be producing a growing number of investable businesses while continuing to receive a disproportionately small share of the global capital flowing into the sector.