Africa's 2026 IPO Wave, Country by Country

Three African countries have live share offers open or just closed right now, and a longer queue is forming behind them. Before any of the names matter, there is one question worth asking about every listing on this page: does the money go into the company, or to the people selling? Two of the biggest deals of 2026 answer that differently.

The question that matters more than the names

An IPO can be one of two things, and the difference is not cosmetic.

A primary offer creates new shares. The money raised goes into the company's bank account to fund something — a factory, an expansion, paying down debt. Existing owners are diluted.

A secondary offer sells shares that already exist. The money goes to whoever was holding them — founders, or a private equity fund reaching the end of its life. The company itself receives nothing and is no better capitalised the day after than the day before.

Neither is sinister. Early backers are entitled to sell, and a secondary offer can be perfectly sound. But they tell you different things about why a listing is happening now, and the two headline African deals of 2026 sit on opposite sides of that line.

Nigeria

Dangote Petroleum Refinery — open until 27 October

The largest listing in African history. 4.1 billion new shares at ₦525, raising about ₦2.15 trillion ($1.6 billion) for roughly 3.3% of the company. It opened 14 September, was extended from 13 October to 27 October, and is expected to list on the Nigerian Exchange around late November or December.

This is a primary offer. The shares are new and the proceeds part-fund a $14.3 billion programme to double refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029. We cover what the refinery is and why Africa imports its own oil back separately, and what a 3.3% float means in another piece.

One thing worth noticing: in August 2026, reporting anticipated a Dangote IPO of around $5 billion. The actual base offer came in at about $1.6 billion. Pre-IPO numbers in the press are estimates, often generous ones, and they are not what you end up being offered.

NNPC — talked about, not scheduled

President Bola Tinubu confirmed on 6 August 2026 that the government intends to list the Nigerian National Petroleum Company on the NGX. The idea dates back to 2021, NNPC said in March 2025 it was in the "final stages" of preparation, and chief executive Bayo Ojulari has pointed to 2028. Treat it as an intention, not a date.

Kenya

Quickmart — open until 30 October, listing 12 November

Kenya's supermarket chain is selling 2 billion existing ordinary shares at KES 7.50 — a full 50% of its issued share capital — to raise about KES 15 billion gross, valuing the company near KES 30 billion. The offer opened 5 October, closes 30 October, and trading on the Nairobi Securities Exchange is expected to begin 12 November 2026.

This one is secondary, explicitly. The shares already exist and the proceeds go to the selling shareholders, not to Quickmart. The seller is Sokoni Retail Kenya Limited, owned by the private equity firm Adenia (50.79%), the Kinuthia family (31.83%), the Tumaini founders (12.02%) and chief executive Peter Kang'iri (5.36%). Adenia alone stands to receive roughly KES 7.62 billion.

That is a private equity fund realising an investment, with the founders taking some money off the table alongside it. A completely normal transaction — and a different proposition from Dangote, where the cash funds a refinery expansion. Same word, "IPO". Different economics.

Egypt

Egypt is running the most systematic listing programme on the continent, and it is state-driven rather than founder-driven. The government is pushing state-owned companies onto the Egyptian Exchange to broaden the market and attract foreign capital.

Six state companies have had listing terms finalised: Sinai Manganese, Spring Manufacturing and Transport Equipment (Yayat), The Egyptian Contracting Company (El Abd) and El Nasr Housing and Development on the main market, plus National Assets Management and Investment and National Investment and Development (NIRCO) on the SME segment. Stake sizes and valuations have not been published.

Separately, the prime minister and petroleum minister have reviewed plans to bring ten petroleum companies to the EGX.

Recent Egyptian activity shows there is real demand: Gourmet Egypt completed an IPO and listed in February 2026, MNT Tech Holding applied in September 2026 to list 1.6 billion shares, and a private tranche for MNT-Halan was reported 11.2 times oversubscribed in October 2026.

The pipeline — speculative, treat accordingly

Everything in this section is reported as planned, considered or "eyed". None of it is confirmed, the figures are press estimates, and African listing timetables slip routinely. We are listing them because they show where the pipeline is pointing, not because they are investable today.

The pattern hiding in that table

Look at the venue column. M-KOPA to London. Chipper Cash to Nasdaq or Johannesburg. Helios Towers to London or Johannesburg. Zipline to Nasdaq. Flutterwave to the US and Lagos.

Several of the continent's most prominent growth companies are expected to list somewhere other than their home exchange — usually London or New York, where the capital pools are deeper, the currency is harder and the investor base is global. The UK government has actively courted African companies to list in London.

For an ordinary investor in Nairobi or Lagos, that is the quiet problem. A Kenyan company listing in London is not something most Kenyans can easily buy, and its success does not deepen the Nairobi exchange. The home market gets the company's operations and employment; another market gets its shares, its liquidity and its index weight.

This is also why Dangote's choice of a primary listing in Lagos is being treated as significant beyond its size. As Citigroup's Miguel Azevedo put it: "One transaction won't create a market, but this transaction by its size will change things."

Before you get excited about any of these

The practical obstacles are the same ones we have written about before, and they apply to every name on this page.

• Access. Most African listings cannot be bought through a standard US or European brokerage account. You generally need a local broker and a local depository account, with local identity documentation.
• Currency. Your return is the share price move and the naira, shilling or pound move. Currency has swallowed plenty of good African equity returns, and fund managers cite exactly that as the reason private equity exits stalled.
• Liquidity. Small floats and thin volumes mean getting out can be much harder than getting in. We looked at an extreme example in a Ghanaian stock trading a few thousand dollars a day that still ranked 15th by volume on its exchange.
• IPO pricing is set by the seller. In every offer on this page, the people deciding the price are the ones selling the shares. That does not make the price wrong, but it does mean nobody in the process is working on your behalf.

A useful sanity check from the research itself: IPOs have accounted for only about 10% of African private equity exits over the past two decades, and that share is expected to decline slightly. A "wave" in African listings is still a modest number of deals.

A note on sources

Part of the pipeline above comes from research published by mystocks.africa, a commercial investing platform covering African exchanges. We cite it because it is one of the few places compiling this pipeline in one list, and we have labelled its items as speculative because that is how its own article frames them — with words like "eyes", "plans" and "could". We have no relationship with the platform, we are not recommending it, and we verified the confirmed deals above against independent reporting.

Sources

1. Energy News Network, Dangote refinery nine-month results and extended IPO timetable, Oct. 2026 — energy-news-network.com
2. Billionaires.Africa, Dangote IPO allocation and extension to 27 October, 15 Oct. 2026 — billionaires.africa
3. TechTrends Kenya, "Quickmart's KES15 billion NSE offer gives Adenia and founders a partial exit," 5 Oct. 2026 — offer price, stake, sellers, dates and valuation — techtrendske.co.ke
4. African Markets, "Egypt accelerates its privatisation drive as six state-owned companies head for the Egyptian Exchange" — named companies, petroleum listing plans, Gourmet Egypt, MNT Tech Holding and MNT-Halan — african-markets.com
5. Semafor, "Africa's dealmakers bet on IPO wave," 10 Aug. 2026 — NNPC listing intention, the $5bn Dangote estimate, BCG exit data and analyst quotes — semafor.com
6. mystocks.africa, "Potential 2026 IPOs in Africa" — the speculative pipeline table — mystocks.africa