Nigerian startups Omniretail, PalmPay, Remedial Health, Termii and Moniepoint, among others, have secured top spots on the Financial Times’ 2025 list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies.
These companies emerged as continental innovators, with Nigeria holding 28 spots on the list, the second-highest after South Africa’s 51.
Compiled in collaboration with Statista, the ranking assesses companies based on compound annual growth rates (CAGR) between 2020 and 2023.
The list offers a look at private and emerging companies that are not usually in the public eye but are impacting African business dynamics.
Top of the List: Nigerian Startups Surge Ahead
Omniretail, a B2B e-commerce and embedded finance platform, led the entire ranking with an astounding compound annual growth rate of 795.9% and absolute growth of 71,818.4%. In just three years, its revenue grew from $0.28 million in 2020 to $120.15 million in 2023.
Headquartered in Nigeria and operating in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the company has become a huge innovator in bridging the gap between manufacturers and informal retailers.
Second on the list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies is PalmPay, a digital wallet and payments platform that posted 583.6% CAGR, growing from $0.2 million in 2020 to $63.9 million in 2023. Its employee count also soared from 87 to over 1,000 during the same period, showing both financial and operational scale.
In third place was Remedial Health, a Nigerian Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics company that recorded 339.1% CAGR. The company’s revenue grew from $0.19 million to $16.3 million, with employees growing from 6 in 2020 to 300 in 2023.
Moniepoint, another Nigerian fintech firm, made the list, growing its revenue from $15 million in 2020 to $264.51 million in 2023, a 1,663.4% increase. The company now employs 1686 people, up from just 216 three years ago.
Nigeria and South Africa Dominate the List
Together, Nigeria and South Africa accounted for 79 of the 130 companies listed. While this shows the depth of entrepreneurship in the continent’s two largest economies, it also stresses how difficult it remains for startups from smaller African nations to scale regionally.
Stéphane Bacquaert, managing partner at Adenia, a private equity firm focused on Africa, noted that Africa’s fragmentation makes it difficult to operate across borders. “You deal with different currencies, different legal environments, and, despite the political efforts to try to integrate the regions, the reality is that you don’t operate the same way in Côte d’Ivoire as in Senegal,” he said. “Those are two very different markets, as are Kenya and Tanzania.”
Of the Nigerian companies that made the list, only PalmPay operates in more than three countries. Omniretail, despite its scale, is active in just two additional countries. The ranking reiterates this reality, a few markets offer the scale needed to succeed, and Nigeria tops that list.
Unsurprisingly, fintech companies took the lion’s share in the ranking, making up nearly 20% of all firms. This has been the order of the day within the African tech funding space for a while now.
British International Investment CEO Leslie Maasdorp explained, just four countries including Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa, accounted for 90% of all fintech funding on the continent in 2024.
However, even with issues like currency depreciation and rising global interest rates, Nigeria’s fintech sector is not giving in. Norfund’s Executive Vice President, Ylva Lindberg, commented, “The entrepreneurial spirit in Nigeria in particular is formidable; there’s a sense that anything is possible.”
Investment Still Fragile
Some high-profile African startups, including those previously ranked, have collapsed. Gro Intelligence, once a leading agritech and analytics firm, went bust in 2023. Even Jumia, long dubbed “Africa’s Amazon,” has scaled back operations, its share price reflecting the downturn.
Greg Schwebig, founder and CEO of Africaworks, ranked fifth, said global monetary tightening has hurt African startups. “The whole start-up funding boom happened when there was excess liquidity in the developed world and cash moved to the developing world, including Africa. Now if you can get a T-bill at 5 per cent, people think, why would I invest in Africa?”
For some, the solution can be found in resilience and localisation. Africaworks uses an asset-light model and avoids overdependence on external capital.
Meanwhile, companies like Omniretail are directly addressing systemic challenges. “Many microenterprises don’t have access to finance or distribution in any meaningful way,” said Lindberg.
She shared the story of a Nigerian woman who arrived at Omniretail with only a driving licence and is now CEO of her own small fleet-based business.
While the macroeconomic environment is tough, marked by inflation, debt burdens, and fluctuating currencies, the success stories on the FT-Statista list show that African companies, particularly in Nigeria, are still finding ways to thrive.
The growth numbers speak volumes, but behind them are countless small enterprises, job opportunities, and innovations pushing the continent forward.
The full Financial Times ranking of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies will be officially published on June 5, 2025.
