Close to nine in every ten late-stage venture dollars is now flowing into AI, and about two-thirds of the rebound in global startup ecosystem value over the past year landed in three United States cities.
Jonathan Ortmans, founder and president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, put those numbers to the opening day of the GEC+Africa Summit in Cape Town this week.
“Never has the entrepreneurial economy created more value,” he said. “But never has it created that value in so few places.”
His argument was that the concentration is contingent rather than structural. “The narrowing is not a law. It’s a result, and results can be changed.”
What launched
Against that backdrop, African startup support organisation 22 On Sloane launched KUMii, an AI-powered platform intended to connect entrepreneurs to funding, markets, mentorship, learning and business tools.
It also announced that Sloane Capital is raising R1 billion ($63 million) to finance startups and MSMEs across the continent. The fund has secured a Category II licence and a National Credit Regulator licence.
KUMii’s functions:
- Business profiles with AI-powered matching to relevant funders and investment opportunities
- Market-access tools matching businesses to tender and procurement opportunities
- Business-readiness tools for developing business plans and preparing for funding
- Mentorship, learning resources and access to business software
More than 4,000 startups and MSMEs have registered, according to 22 On Sloane.
The problem it targets
“Funding and finding customers is often fragmented,” said KUMii chief executive Norma Ngobane. “Entrepreneurs are navigating multiple platforms and different environments to find the right support, funding and customers.”
Businesses expanding across Africa contend with different regulations, currencies, procurement systems, funding networks and support programmes — most operating independently of each other. Finding the right opportunity can be as difficult as qualifying for it.
Kizito Okechukwu, executive head of 22 On Sloane, framed it as a structural contradiction. “The continent holds immense structural opportunity, yet this opportunity is consistently constrained by internal and external fragmentation.”
On the capital side, he argued the instruments themselves need rethinking. “We need to think of better financial instruments and alternative methods to ensure that capital reaches each and every entrepreneur that needs it.”
Discovery is not supply
The two announcements address different constraints, and it is worth keeping them separate.
KUMii is a discovery and matching layer. Sloane Capital is capital. A platform that surfaces funders more efficiently helps only if the funders have money to deploy — and iAfrica reported this week that only 190 African startups raised at least $100,000 in the first half of 2026, the lowest count since 2021, with the $100,000 to $500,000 band contracting sharply. Digital Africa chief executive Grégoire de Padirac put AI-native companies at under 2% of continental startup funding over the same period.
Better matching against a shrinking pool improves the odds of finding a closed door faster.
The R1 billion is the more consequential half, and the least detailed. No first close, timeline or ticket sizes have been disclosed.
The standard Ortmans set
The sharpest line at the summit was aimed at the people organising it.
“Ultimately, we’re not necessarily measuring real performance. We’re measuring too much activity,” Ortmans said — a caution that African ecosystem interventions need to demonstrate outcomes rather than participation.
That is the test KUMii will face. Four thousand registrations is an activity metric. The performance metric is how many of those businesses secured funding, won a tender or closed a customer through the platform, and 22 On Sloane has not yet published it.
“On a fragmented continent, connection is power,” Okechukwu said. “And in a connected Africa, opportunity becomes exponential.”
Whether connection converts is the number to ask for in six months.
