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, six of eight exported the value off the continent. Exactly one — Flutterwave's all-stock buy of Mono — kept it home. One more, Nedbank's US$855m move on Kenya's NCBA, we score as mixed: intra-African, but with control moving south.
Six exported, one retained, one 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.