The TechTrends Podcast | Profitability Becomes the New Currency for African Startups, Says Google’s Alex Okosi
African startups are increasingly being judged on profitability rather than user growth, as the continent’s funding landscape matures beyond its earlier reliance on rapid scale and international venture capital, according to Google’s Managing Director for Africa, Alex Okosi.
Speaking on the TechTrends Podcast, Okosi said the shift is most visible in the latest cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa, where 60 percent of graduates are already profitable, with an average monthly revenue of $60,000. He described the figure as a signal of growing resilience and commercial viability across the continent’s startup ecosystem.
“Profitability is now the new currency,” Okosi said, noting that artificial intelligence is playing a central role in helping startups find efficiencies, scale faster and optimise operations.
The conversation comes against the backdrop of Africa’s venture funding landscape, which raised an estimated $3.9 billion in 2025. But Okosi acknowledged that the headline figure obscures a more complicated picture, with capital still concentrated in a handful of established hubs.
To counter that concentration, the latest accelerator cohort was deliberately drawn from a wider pool. From roughly 2,500 applicants, Google selected 15 startups spanning seven markets across Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone Africa, including businesses from Côte d’Ivoire, Angola, Tanzania and Senegal.
“We’re not just focused on the hubs, but on really identifying the best businesses, the best founders that are driving businesses that we think can really scale and provide solutions for Africa and the world,” Okosi said.
He pointed to growing participation from African investors as a parallel shift reshaping how startups on the continent are funded. Venture debt, he said, has emerged as a meaningful alternative to equity financing, allowing founders to access capital without heavy dilution, with African development finance institutions and investors increasingly stepping into a funding gap left by the global venture capital slowdown.
Okosi argued that African founders are also getting better at making the case for patient capital. Where local investors have traditionally favoured shorter-term returns, he said founders are now able to present credible profitability timelines, often within 12 to 18 months, that align more closely with how global venture capital itself has shifted.
On deep tech specifically, Okosi cited startups such as South Africa’s Bamboo, which is building AI infrastructure around local languages, and Kenya’s Kormana, which is digitising the informal food sector, as examples of hyper-local solutions that are reaching profitability faster than earlier generations of African startups.
He said Google’s role extends beyond the accelerator itself, pointing to the company’s continued investment in subsea cable infrastructure through the Equiano and forthcoming Umoja projects, alongside digital skills training that has reached more than eight million people across Africa. Google has also worked with the African Union on AI startup policy guidance covering taxation and licensing frameworks aimed at supporting the broader ecosystem.
Okosi welcomed Kenya’s progress on a startup bill and an artificial intelligence policy as part of a broader trend of governments engaging more constructively with the tech sector. He said closing Africa’s infrastructure and skills gaps will require sustained collaboration between private companies, governments and investors, rather than relying on any single actor.
Asked what he would tell founders building AI startups anywhere on the continent, Okosi was direct: lean into the technology rather than waiting to see how it develops.
“AI is the hack that enables us to leapfrog a lot of the challenges that we have,” he said, adding that founders who fail to adopt AI risk falling behind those who do.
Listen to the full conversation on the TechTrends Podcast for more on what it takes for African startups to move from survival to profitability:
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