This is a practitioner's read, not an index. It reflects what we and our network are seeing in live mandates across the continent at the start of 2026 — where deals are actually getting done, where they are stalling, and what a mid-market owner or an inbound buyer should take from it.
1. The macro backdrop
The single biggest variable across African dealmaking remains currency. For dollar- or euro-denominated buyers, local-currency depreciation has done two contradictory things at once: it has made hard-currency-earning assets look cheap, and it has made purely domestic, local-currency businesses harder to underwrite. The deals that clear most easily are the ones with a natural hard-currency revenue line — exports, tourism, commodities, or pan-regional businesses billing in euros or dollars.
The second backdrop variable is the cost and availability of local debt, which remains tight in most markets. That pushes mid-market transactions toward equity-heavy structures and toward buyers — strategics, development-finance-backed funds, family offices — who are not dependent on local leverage to make the maths work.
2. Where capital is actually flowing
Three themes dominate the mid-market pipeline we see.
- Financial services and fintech. Payments, lending, and insurance distribution continue to attract the most consistent buyer interest, driven by under-penetration and demographics. The bar has risen — buyers want real unit economics now, not just user growth — but quality assets clear quickly.
- Consumer and healthcare. A growing, urbanising middle class makes branded consumer businesses, pharmacy and clinic networks, and dermocosmetics attractive to both regional consolidators and European strategics looking for growth they can't find at home.
- Energy transition and infrastructure. Distributed power, logistics, and digital infrastructure draw patient, often development-finance-linked capital. These are slower processes with more stakeholders, but the capital is real and committed.
What is notably harder: anything heavily dependent on a single regulatory regime, anything with opaque ownership, and anything where the financials cannot survive a serious Quality of Earnings look. The flight to quality that re-priced European deals applies here with extra force.
The constraint on African mid-market M&A is rarely a shortage of capital or of attractive businesses. It is a shortage of assets prepared to the standard an international buyer expects.
3. Francophone vs anglophone dynamics
Treating "Africa" as one market is the first mistake outsiders make. The francophone and anglophone ecosystems behave differently in ways that matter to a deal.
Anglophone markets — Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa — have deeper local private-equity and venture ecosystems, more developed capital markets, and a larger population of businesses already familiar with institutional diligence. Processes there tend to look more like what a London or New York buyer expects.
Francophone markets — across West and North Africa — are often under-intermediated relative to their size. There are fewer local advisors running competitive processes, which means more genuinely proprietary, off-market opportunities for a buyer with the right relationships, but also businesses less prepared for a structured sale. OHADA legal harmonisation across much of the francophone zone helps cross-border deals, but local execution still turns on relationships and on advisors who can operate credibly in French and in the local context. This is precisely the gap our francophone footprint is built to close.
4. What outside buyers consistently get wrong
Inbound buyers — European and Gulf strategics especially — make a recurring set of errors:
- Underpricing relationships. In much of the continent, the relationship precedes the transaction, not the other way round. A buyer who runs a purely transactional, deadline-driven process in a relationship-driven market loses access to the best off-market assets.
- Importing a template process. The diligence and documentation playbook that works in Germany needs adaptation, not transplantation. Record-keeping norms, the role of family ownership, and informal-economy linkages all require a locally fluent approach to diligence.
- Mispricing currency and repatriation risk. The headline multiple is meaningless if you have not modelled how, and at what cost, you get returns out in hard currency. This belongs in the structure, not in a footnote.
- Treating the continent as monolithic. A thesis built on "Africa" rather than on a specific country, sector, and counterparty is not a thesis. It is a press release.
5. Practical advice — for owners and for buyers
If you own a business here and expect to transact in the next few years, the highest-value work is the same as anywhere, with extra weight on two things: get your financials to a standard an international buyer can diligence cleanly, and build a hard-currency narrative if you have one. Preparation is an even sharper differentiator in a market where so few assets are properly prepared. Our exit-readiness framework applies directly.
If you are a buyer looking at the continent, invest in local relationships and local advisory before you invest in targets, choose your country and sector with precision, and build currency and governance reality into your structure from day one. The proprietary, off-market opportunities that justify the effort are real — but they go to buyers who have done that groundwork.
Africa rewards operators who are genuinely on the ground and punishes tourists. That has not changed in 2026, and it is unlikely to. If you are weighing a transaction — as an owner or an acquirer — and want a candid, locally grounded read, that conversation is the right first step.
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