Madica backs five African pre-seeds in Algeria and Cameroon push

Madica, the San Francisco-based pre-seed investment programme focused on African founders, has announced five new portfolio companies spanning Algeria, Cameroon, Nigeria and Egypt. Each startup will receive up to $200,000 and enrol in Madica's 18-month programme, which pairs patient capital with mentorship, executive coaching, founder immersion trips, and access to a global investor network. The batch marks the programme's first institutional entries into Algeria and Cameroon, two markets that venture capital has largely bypassed in favour of Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo.

The five companies cut across an unusually broad technology spectrum. Talenteo (Algeria) digitises HR management for mid-market businesses across Francophone Africa. Paysika (Cameroon) is a neobank offering virtual and physical payment cards to consumers and SMEs in Central Africa. ChipMango (Nigeria) is building a semiconductor ecosystem through chip design services, engineering education, and localised edge-AI products. Delta Oil (Egypt) connects fragmented used cooking oil collection networks with international buyers, converting a waste stream into feedstock for renewable fuels. Bekia (Egypt) is a digital platform that pays households and businesses for recyclable materials and routes them to industrial buyers.

Capital flowing into overlooked markets

The structural argument behind Madica's expansion is straightforward: early-stage capital in Africa remains heavily concentrated in a handful of ecosystems, leaving founders in Francophone and Central African markets to bootstrap or seek informal investment. Madica, affiliated with Flourish Ventures, a global early-stage venture firm managing approximately $850m, operates as a deliberate counterweight to that concentration. By entering Algeria and Cameroon, it is testing whether institutional pre-seed infrastructure can catalyse startup formation in markets where it has not previously existed, rather than simply following deal flow to established hubs.

Emmanuel Adegboye, Head of Madica, put it directly: "We've always believed that exceptional founders can be found in every corner of Africa, yet access to early-stage capital remains heavily concentrated in a handful of ecosystems. By making our first investments in Algeria and Cameroon, we're continuing to prove that world-class businesses can emerge from markets that have historically been overlooked by venture capital."

Convergence signals in the cohort

For cross-sector observers, the composition of this cohort is as instructive as the geography. ChipMango's attempt to seed a semiconductor design capability in Nigeria sits within the wider global scramble to diversify chip-design talent away from East Asia and the established US-European corridor. As sovereign and institutional investors pour capital into semiconductor resilience, the question of where the next generation of chip engineers will be trained is a genuine strategic variable, and West Africa has so far been absent from that conversation.

Delta Oil and Bekia, meanwhile, are building the physical collection infrastructure that circular-economy and renewable-fuel supply chains require at their base layer. International buyers of used cooking oil as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) feedstock are already active in Europe and South-East Asia; Delta Oil's model suggests Egypt could become a meaningful supply node as SAF mandates tighten globally. Neither company operates in isolation from the capital flows reshaping energy and sustainability investment worldwide.

The fintech angle is less novel but no less significant at this stage. Paysika's Central African neobanking play addresses a payments infrastructure gap that mirrors the conditions in which Flutterwave and Wave found early traction in West Africa. Whether Francophone Central Africa can produce a similar breakout company is unproven, but the structural conditions, a large unbanked population, fragmented legacy banking, and improving mobile penetration, are comparable.

Madica launched in 2022 and continues to accept pitches from Africa-headquartered startups with an MVP, initial paying customers, and founders engaged full-time. The programme's next cohort will be watched for whether it extends further into underserved francophone and lusophone markets.