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Africa’s private capital ecosystem has recorded a major milestone with the launch of the continent’s first-ever Exit Index—an initiative designed to deepen liquidity, strengthen investor confidence, and accelerate the growth of scalable startups.
The Index was unveiled at the third annual Africa Prosperity Summit, hosted by Ventures Platform in November. The event, themed “Growing the Pie: Building the Pathways for Liquidity, Scale, and Enduring Returns,” convened investors, operators, policymakers, and innovation leaders to address the structural challenges limiting African startups from achieving sustainable scale and meaningful exits.
Presented by Stears’ Head of Research, Michael Famoroti, the African Exit Index is a continuously updated, publicly accessible resource that benchmarks exit performance across the continent. Famoroti noted that the tool is positioned to provide data-driven insights that will guide better decision-making for investors, policymakers, and market operators seeking clarity on exit pathways and long-term value creation.
The summit featured high-level conversations on Africa’s liquidity gaps, systemic bottlenecks, and the policy and regulatory reforms needed to unlock scale. Key executives—including NGX Group GMD/CEO Temi Popoola; Moniepoint CEO Tosin Eniolorunda; BII’s Director of Venture Capital, Chirantan Patnaik; and Norrsken22 General Partner, Lexi Novitske—discussed pressing issues such as FX restrictions, capital controls, regulatory constraints, and market depth.
In his opening remarks, Founding Partner at Ventures Platform, Kola Aina, emphasised that Africa is at a defining moment where liquidity—not just capital—will determine the trajectory of startup growth. He highlighted the continent’s limited exit pathways and underdeveloped acquisition and listing markets, stressing the need to build acquisition-ready companies, deepen corporate participation in exits, and innovate Africa-specific liquidity mechanisms.
Patnaik also delivered a data-rich analysis of capital deployment trends, LP expectations, and fund dynamics, drawing parallels between Africa and other emerging markets such as Latin America and India. He positioned Africa’s liquidity challenges within a global context, underscoring the importance of maturing exit markets for long-term prosperity.
Ventures Platform’s Managing Partner, Dotun Olowoporoku, noted that the Africa Prosperity Summit was established to move beyond dialogue and drive alignment on the continent’s most critical growth levers. He emphasised that unlocking liquidity and achieving scale will require collaboration, transparency, trusted intelligence and disciplined execution across the ecosystem.
The summit further explored alternative investment instruments—including venture debt, blended finance and revenue-based financing—as viable approaches to enable African companies to scale across borders. A recurring theme throughout the event was the urgent need for a credible, data-backed measure of exit performance—an important gap the new African Exit Index now fills.
During a fireside chat titled “The Road to a Billion: Raising, Scaling, and Building Trust at Scale,” Olowoporoku and Eniolorunda highlighted the operational discipline, ecosystem trust, and local-market intelligence required to build billion-dollar African companies. Both leaders stressed the importance of balancing ambition with disciplined execution to achieve sustainable, cross-border growth.
Now in its third year, the Africa Prosperity Summit continues to serve as a vital platform for driving actionable strategies, informed policymaking and ecosystem-wide collaboration. This year’s edition was sponsored by G. Elias, Aluko & Oyebode, Iron Capital and Google for Startups Accelerator Africa, with support from partners including AVCA, Algebra Ventures, Miva University, Novastar, Wimbart, 7 Generations Institute and TLP Advisory.
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