Condia Insider: Africa’s non-tech fastest growing companies

🍔 Quick Bite: While tech companies often steal the spotlight, the Financial Times’ 2025 list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies shows that non-tech businesses; from hospitals to construction firms, are quietly  experiencing growth across the continent.

🧠 The Breakdown

When the Financial Times dropped its 2024 ranking of Africa’s fastest-growing companies, the usual suspects made the cut: fintechs, telcos, and SaaS startups. But tucked between the tech darlings and venture-backed unicorns are companies quietly building, mining, healing, and feeding the continent.

Construction firms, healthcare providers, food processors, and even safari operators made the cut. And they didn’t just sneak in at the bottom; some of them posted growth rates that rival, and in some cases outpace, their tech counterparts.

Some of the non-tech names on the list include Piaffe Flavours & Fragrances, Hot 1027 FM, Evercare Hospital Lekki, BlueCamp, X3M Marketing Ideas, Tourism and Public Relations Services, Transcorp Hotels, The Tourist Company of Nigeria, FoodCo Nigeria, and St. Nicholas Hospital.

So, while it is tempting to focus on the tech unicorns disrupting markets and grabbing the spotlight, this list reminds us that Africa’s business landscape is broader and richer than that. It is a mix of innovation and tradition, tech and non-tech, startups and established firms, all driving growth in their own ways.

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This broader view is worth paying attention to. It reveals a continent where economic opportunity is beyond a few sectors and where success stories come in many shapes and sizes.

Why non-tech matters for tech ecosystems

It’s easy to forget that before you can digitise anything, there has to be something to digitise. That’s where these non-tech companies come in. They’re laying the groundwork, sometimes literally, that the tech ecosystem build on.

Take construction and infrastructure. As African cities expand, so does the need for better roads, housing, and industrial spaces. The companies delivering these projects are helping to unlock new markets. That’s fuel for tech companies that need logistics hubs, warehousing infrastructure, or even just better road networks to function efficiently.

The same goes for healthcare. The surge of healthcare companies on the FT list shows the growing demand for better, locally accessible medical services. For healthtech founders, this is more than good news, it’s also a signal. You can’t build successful telemedicine or patient management platforms without hospitals, clinics, and medical staff already in place. The offline infrastructure needs to exist before the digital layer can add value.

And then there’s manufacturing. As the cost of imports continues to rise and supply chains get more complex, local production is becoming more important. African manufacturers that are growing fast aren’t just patching a hole in the market. They’re creating stable supply channels, and offering tech startups opportunities to embed automation, supply chain tracking, and enterprise software.

Looking at the full picture

South Africa and Nigeria dominate the list with 51 and 25 companies, respectively. This dominance is no surprise given their market sizes and entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, it also exposes a reality: smaller African countries struggle to get a foothold on such continental rankings. 

The fragmented nature of African markets makes cross-border expansion tough. This highlights the need for improved regional integration and supportive policies to help emerging economies scale their businesses beyond borders. It also raises questions about inclusivity and representation in African business success stories.

Because Africa’s growth narrative is not only driven by innovation in code and cloud. It’s also driven by people laying bricks, running farms, operating clinics, managing factories, and transporting goods.

The FT list reminds us that while tech may be the golden child, it’s not the only one doing the work. And if the goal is to build for Africa—by Africans and for Africans—then tech needs to continue to acknowledge the role these non-tech businesses play in laying the groundwork for scalable impact.

This isn’t a tech versus non-tech debate; it’s a tech and non-tech opportunity. The real unlock is in collaboration. The fastest-growing sectors across Africa are creating needs that technology is uniquely positioned to solve.

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