For years, Nigeria’s sheer market size made it the default answer to where dealmaking in Africa happens. New data suggests that assumption is being rewritten, and Kenya is the country doing the rewriting.
According to DealMakers Africa data for the first half of 2026, Kenya has overtaken Nigeria as the continent’s top merger and acquisition market by value. Kenyan deal value rose 671 percent year-on-year to reach $1.44 billion, an extraordinary jump that reflects both a surge in investor confidence and a maturing local capital market. Nigeria, by contrast, still logged the highest number of individual transactions, but total deal value fell 89 percent to roughly $106 million, its weakest first-half performance in nearly a decade.
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The divergence tells a story about two different paths African economies are taking toward growth. Nigeria’s decline in deal value has been attributed to a mix of currency volatility, election-related caution, valuation gaps between buyers and sellers, and a new tax regime that has made some investors pause. Kenya’s rise, meanwhile, points to the opposite dynamic: relative macroeconomic stability, a more predictable regulatory environment, and a banking and telecommunications sector that continues to attract serious international capital. Nedbank’s acquisition of a stake in NCBA, one of Kenya’s largest financial institutions, was a significant contributor to that jump in value, underscoring how a handful of large, high-confidence transactions can reshape a market’s entire trajectory.
The pattern that emerges is one industry watchers describe as a split between ticket size and volume. East Africa, led by Kenya, is increasingly winning the large cheques, the multimillion- and billion-dollar transactions that reflect deep investor conviction in a market’s long-term stability. Nigeria, despite its challenges, continues to generate volume, a high number of smaller deals that speaks to the sheer density and dynamism of its entrepreneurial and business ecosystem, even if the biggest checks are currently landing elsewhere.
For Kenya, this shift builds on years of deliberate positioning. Nairobi has cultivated a reputation as East Africa’s financial and technology hub, home to a dense network of banks, telecom operators, venture capital funds and multinational regional headquarters. Kenya’s fintech sector, anchored by mobile money infrastructure that has become a global reference point, has made the country a magnet for both strategic acquirers and financial investors looking for exposure to Africa’s digital economy. The country’s relatively stable currency and clearer regulatory pathways for foreign investment have added to that appeal, particularly at a moment when investors across emerging markets are prioritising predictability over pure market size.
This is not a story of Nigeria’s decline so much as a story of Africa’s dealmaking landscape becoming genuinely multipolar. For decades, conversations about African investment often began and ended with Nigeria and South Africa, the continent’s two largest economies. Kenya’s emergence as a top destination for deal value signals that investors are increasingly willing to look beyond the biggest markets and toward the most efficient and stable ones, a shift that ultimately benefits the continent as a whole by spreading capital, expertise and opportunity more broadly.
There are real challenges still shaping these numbers, from currency risk to the practical difficulties of closing large transactions across different regulatory systems. But the underlying trend is one worth watching closely. As Kenya cements its position as a preferred gateway for African dealmaking, it offers a model for how a mid-sized economy, with the right mix of infrastructure, policy stability and sector depth, can compete for and win global capital, not through size alone, but through the confidence it can inspire.
The ripple effects of this shift are likely to extend well beyond the balance sheets of the companies involved. A surge in high-value dealmaking tends to bring with it a deepening of professional services, from legal and advisory firms to investment banking talent, all of which strengthens the broader ecosystem around a market. It also tends to draw the attention of other investors who track capital flows closely, creating a kind of momentum where success attracts further success. If Kenya can sustain this trajectory through the second half of 2026 and beyond, it may cement its status not as an alternative to Nigeria, but as a genuine peer at the centre of Africa’s next chapter of economic growth.
