Madica, a structured pre-seed investment programme for African startups, has raised $6 million from Flourish Ventures to extend its investment pilot by three years. The new capital will fund between 25 and 30 additional early-stage companies across the continent, building on a three-year track record that has begun to challenge assumptions about where venture-scale businesses can emerge in Africa.

Launched in 2022, Madica set out to test whether founders operating in neglected markets, sectors, and networks can build globally competitive businesses given the right capital and hands-on support. The sector-agnostic programme has since backed 18 startups across 10 countries and 12 sectors, pairing patient pre-seed funding with structured company-building assistance.

According to Madica, those startups have gone on to attract additional funding worth, on average, twice the size of its own investment — a figure the programme treats as an early signal of investor confidence. The yardstick carries weight because venture outcomes take years to mature, leaving follow-on commitments from outside investors as one of the few near-term measures of whether a pre-seed thesis is holding up.

Emmanuel Adegboye, Head of Madica, said the programme began as an experiment and that gathering meaningful evidence would require years of investment, support, and learning.

"Three years have given us valuable lessons and encouraging early signals, but building enduring companies and assessing venture outcomes takes longer. Flourish Ventures' continued commitment gives us the capital to build on those lessons and test our conviction across a broader portfolio while deepening our company-building support," he said in a statement.

Portfolio Composition and Founder Reach

The makeup of Madica's portfolio is as notable as its size. Every company it has backed is majority-owned by Africans, more than half have at least one female co-founder, and 39% are led by female CEOs. Rather than reflecting a diversity quota, the programme says these figures stem from a deliberate decision to seek founder talent in places that established venture capital networks have consistently failed to reach.

Application data reinforces that point. Pitches have come from founders across 28 sectors and 78 countries, with 40% of applications originating outside Africa's four largest venture capital markets — a sign that entrepreneurial potential is broad, even where the funding infrastructure to meet it has lagged.

Madica's model is designed to address that gap. Beyond writing cheques, the programme pairs capital with structured, hands-on company-building support and engages founders at a stage before most institutional investors are willing to commit — often when companies have little more than a working product and early revenue, as the programme's own eligibility criteria reflect. The extended pilot will allow Madica to track how a larger cohort of companies converts early traction into sustained business growth, and whether its approach can consistently generate outcomes that would encourage other investors to adopt similar models. Whether the incoming 25–30 companies reproduce that follow-on pattern — and keep drawing applications from beyond the continent's largest venture hubs — will be one signal to watch as the experiment enters its next phase.

Efayomi Carr, Investment Partner at Flourish Ventures and co-founder of Madica, said the first three years had strengthened, rather than shaken, the programme's founding belief.

"We retain our conviction that with the right capital and support, exceptional talent across Africa can build world-class businesses," Carr said.

The additional funding keeps Madica open to new applicants. Eligible startups must have a minimum viable product with paying customers, at least one founder working full-time, little or no institutional funding to date, and must be headquartered in Africa. Further details are available on the programme's official website at madica.vc.

Source: TechNext24 — https://technext24.com/news/madica-raises-6m-early-stage-african-startups/