Madica Expands to Algeria and Cameroon, Adds Five Startups to Portfolio

Madica, the pre-seed investment program affiliated with Flourish Ventures, announced five new investments this week, pushing into Algeria and Cameroon for the first time. Each startup gets up to $200,000.

The moves bring Madica’s total portfolio to 18 companies across 10 African markets.

The expansion fits Madica’s stated mission: back founders in places venture capital usually skips.

The Five Bets

The new investments span four countries and a mix of sectors.

Talenteo, an HR and payroll platform for Francophone Africa, is led by Louai Djaffer. The Algeria- and France-based company closed a six-figure round from Tunisia’s 216 Capital last year.

Paysika, a Cameroon-based neobank issuing payment cards across Central Africa, is co-founded by Roger Nengwe and Stezen Bisselou. It raised roughly $348,000 in pre-seed funding from European and Nigerian angels back in 2021.

ChipMango, a Nigerian semiconductor design and training startup founded by Ola Fadiran and Jovan Andjelich, just closed a $1.9 million seed round led by Atlantica Ventures. Madica’s check is one of several in that round, alongside DFS Labs, Kaleo Ventures, and others.

Delta Oil, an Egyptian used-cooking-oil aggregator founded by Serag Moussa, has drawn philanthropic funding from Alfanar since 2021. Its earlier backer, Falak Startups, exited at a 25.5-times return this April.

Bekia, an Egyptian recycling platform founded by Alaa Afifi, has raised $2.55 million across several rounds from Orbit Ventures, Catalyst Fund, and others. It says it has 75,000 users and has processed over 1,000 tonnes of recycled waste.

A Tough Market

The timing matters. African startup funding has been contracting sharply. Disclosed venture funding across the continent fell 17 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2026, to $1.21 billion across 151 deals.

Median deal sizes shrank from $4.65 million to $2.65 million over the same period. Debt financing, meanwhile, climbed to 36.7 percent of total capital — a sign investors are retreating toward asset-backed structures rather than taking on early equity risk.

Grégoire de Padirac, chief executive of Digital Africa, has pointed to a structural cause: capital worldwide is consolidating around established fund managers and repeat founders, starving emerging funds and first-time entrepreneurs of the flow they used to get. Africa feels this more acutely than most regions, given its heavy reliance on foreign capital.

Emmanuel Adegboye, Madica’s head, said the goal remains proving that “world-class businesses can emerge from markets that have historically been overlooked by venture capital.”

That’s still true of Algeria and Cameroon as ecosystems. Whether it’s still true of the individual founders getting funded is a separate question — and one Madica’s own portfolio increasingly complicates.

Related