Article
Who is building AI in Africa?
127 African startups build artificial intelligence into their core product. Not 127 that mention it. Here is how we told the difference, and what the list shows.
By AR Abdi, founder of Propel · 2026-10-17
Every pitch deck now says AI. That made a simple question hard to answer: which African startups are actually building with it? Keyword searches return everyone who ever wrote the word in a description. So we did it the slow way.
We took every startup on Propel whose description, product or category pointed towards artificial intelligence, 180 companies in all, and read each one. A company made the list when AI or machine learning is the product, or the thing that makes the product work. It did not make the list for teaching AI, for using a model as one step in a checkout flow, or for a chatbot bolted onto something else. The result is 127 companies in, 52 out, and every decision written down with its reason.
Some of the names will be familiar. InstaDeep, Zindi, DataProphet and Cerebrium are on it. So are companies most people outside their sector have never heard of: Intron Health, building speech recognition for clinicians; Sowit and Tolbi in agriculture; Indicina and Cassbana in credit; Yemaachi Biotechnology in genomics. Between them the 127 have 170 recorded financing rounds and about $467 million in disclosed funding, with acquisitions counted separately. The spread across sectors is the point. AI in Africa is not a sector; it is a layer running through health, farming, finance, logistics and language.
Three things we noticed
First, the list runs across 11 sectors; the largest single group is deep tech, but healthcare, fintech and services follow close behind. Second, the capital is thin relative to the ambition; many of these companies have raised one round, and a good number have not disclosed an amount at all. Third, the geography is wider than the usual four markets: 17 countries plus four pan-African companies, with South Africa and Egypt ahead of Kenya and Nigeria on this list.
See the list
From today the list is live on Propel. You can filter the startup directory by AI, every company on the list carries a small "Building with AI, reviewed by Propel" line on its profile, and the whole set sits at propel.africa/focus/ai with country and sector filters. If you think a company belongs on it, or does not, tell us; the list is reviewed by people and it will be corrected by people.