Lagos has emerged as the World’s fastest-growing tech hub valued at $15.3 billion, raised five unicorns and secured over $6 billion in foreign funding.
This is a sprawling mega-city with a relentless drive despite its legendary traffic, erratic power supply but has citizens with a commendable entrepreneurial spirit.
Against all the odds in the city, Lagos shed its label of ‘emerging market’ to claim the title of ‘The World’s Fastest-Growing Tech Ecosystem.’
According to the Dealroom Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2025, Lagos has officially been recognised as the number one fastest-growing emerging tech ecosystem in the world, surpassing cities like Istanbul and Mumbai.
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Lagos was ranked first among 288 global tech hubs, citing its rapid growth in startup value, funding volume, talent pipeline, and innovation output, according to Founder Africa.
Data illustrating the growth include that Lagos has seen an extraordinary 11.6-fold increase in its startup enterprise value since 2017.
While analysing total ecosystem value, it was revealed that the entire Lagos tech ecosystem is now valued at $15.3 billion.
Lagos has also produced five unicorn companies (startups valued at over $1 billion), including global players like Flutterwave, OPay, and Interswitch. The rate of unicorn creation has tripled since 2019.
Between 2019 and 2024, Lagos-based tech startups attracted over $6 billion in direct foreign funding, accounting for more than 70 percent of Nigeria’s total tech investment during that period.
It’s a success story not born in polished boardrooms, but in the gritty innovative hubs.
Lagos cannot be spoken about without a mention of the Fintech Tsunami where fintech’s were the most drivers with the presence of a large, underbanked population.
Lagos has one of the continent’s most ambitious and tech-savvy youth. The city is not just adopting global tech trends but is creating new models for finance, logistics, and commerce that are fundamentally rooted in the realities of the African continent.
The rise of Lagos is the ability of its tech startups to turn complex, everyday problems into billion-dollar solutions.
Lagos startups were not just building apps but they were building an entirely new financial infrastructure with the likes of Flutterwave, Jumia, OPay, Interswitch, and Moniepoint, who have not only maintained status as the city’s five unicorns but have redefined how millions of people transact, save, and access credit across the continent.
The five Lagos unicorns are Interswitch, Flutterwave, Jumia, OPay, and Moniepoint. These companies are tech startups valued at over $1 billion, making Lagos the fastest-growing tech ecosystem in the world in 2025, according to the Lagos State Website.
Here are the Lagos unicorns sitting on the front row of innovation:
Flutterwave
Flutterwave provides a comprehensive payment infrastructure that allows businesses in Africa and across the world to process transactions through a single Application Programming Interface (API).
What they do is essentially connect African businesses to the global economy.
Incorporated in the US (San Francisco), their core operations and focus are deeply rooted in Lagos, Nigeria, and across Africa.
Key products include Flutterwave Rave (payment gateway), Flutterwave Send (remittance), Flutterwave Store (e-commerce).
OPay
OPay, a mobile money and financial services platform, is known for its extensive agent network that brings financial services to the unbanked and underbanked population.
Founded in 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria, and backed by Chinese investors (Opera).
Its key services include Wallet-enabled payments (QR, bank transfers), utility bill payments (airtime, electricity), and savings/loan products.
Moniepoint (formerly TeamApt)
Moniepoint has a focus on providing integrated financial services primarily for businesses, including payment solutions, banking, and credit.
The firm has also expanded into personal banking.
Moniepoint has a global presence but key markets and operations are in Nigeria. It was founded with a focus on solving financial inclusion challenges for African businesses.
Read also: Why Nigeria tech start-ups fail: Lessons from Okra & Lidya
Interswitch
Interswitch is one of the earliest and most foundational players in the Nigerian tech scene.
The firm provides integrated digital payment and transaction processing services. They are also responsible for many of the infrastructure behind ATMs, payment cards, and digital transactions in Nigeria.
It is fully a Lagos-based African company, founded in 2002. Key products include Quick teller (consumer bill payments), and Verve (Africa’s largest domestic card scheme).
Jumia
Jumia is a bit of an odd one among the unicorns because it is a publicly-traded company (NYSE: JMIA), not a private ‘unicorn’ in the strict venture capital sense of the word.
Its market cap is currently over the billion-dollar mark, making it a ‘decacorn’ on the public market, which does not fit the private startup definition.
A decacorn is a privately held startup company with a valuation of over $10 billion. This term, which follows the earlier unicorn, typically applies to companies in the technology sector that have achieved rapid growth through multiple funding rounds.
Jumia is an e-commerce giant founded in Lagos and was an early African tech success.
