THE SCORE, AND THE NUMBER THAT SHOULD WORRY YOU
Every tracker in African tech counts the same thing: how many deals closed, and for how much. TechCabal's headline — 84 deals, US$11.4bn in 2026 — is real and useful. But a deal count measures activity, not ownership. It tells you an African company changed hands; it says nothing about whether the value changed continents.
That is the question this scorecard exists to answer, and the early read is blunt. Of the ownership-moving deals we have verdicted so far, ten of fourteen exported the value off the continent. Two kept it home — Flutterwave's all-stock buy of Mono, and Coca-Cola's Chivita and Hollandia returning to Nigeria's UAC. Two more — Nedbank's US$855m move on NCBA and Vodacom's rise to majority control of Safaricom — we score as mixed: intra-African, but with control crossing borders.
Ten exported, two retained, two mixed. That ratio is the story the celebration around record M&A volumes leaves out — and it is the number every founder, acquirer and policymaker on the continent should be watching.