Click to watchAfrica’s technology industry, emerging from a bruising capital winter, gathered in Lagos on Wednesday to confront a stark new reality: how to build lasting momentum in an ecosystem still reeling from a multi-billion dollar funding collapse.
The question was posed by Tomiwa Aladekomo, CEO of Big Cabal Media, at the opening of the annual Moonshot 2025 conference, which is now in its third season. The backdrop is a market grappling with the whiplash of a venture capital boom and bust. After raising a heady $3.21 billion in the first half of 2022, funding for African startups plummeted to $797 million in the same period of 2024, a staggering contraction that wiped out paper valuations and forced a brutal market correction.
While a recent rebound has seen startups raise $1.42 billion in the first half of 2025—a 78.3% year-over-year increase—the figure remains less than half of the 2022 peak. It’s this tentative recovery that frames the central theme of the conference.
“We have survived the downtimes and failures, and those lessons are driving the next round of innovation,” Aladekomo told an audience of founders, investors, and operators numbering over 1000. “We are not here to ask if it’s possible; we need to know what is true.”
His remarks signal a significant tonal shift for a continental ecosystem once fueled by hype. The founders in attendance today are a more seasoned cohort, having navigated both bull and bear markets. The focus has shifted from chasing sky-high valuations to building sustainable businesses capable of withstanding market volatility and a more stringent regulatory landscape.
For Aladekomo, whose firm publishes the influential TechCabal platform, the path to rebuilding lies in creating a tighter feedback loop between ideas, execution, and market realities. He argued that critical storytelling—highlighting both successes and failures—is essential for the ecosystem to mature and build more resilient ventures. The two-day conference, he positioned, aims to sharpen those insights.
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