Nigerian Startups are making huge strides and progress by developing mind blowing solutions to basic human daily needs. Yesterday, Four (4) Nigerian Startups were selected as finalists for the 10th Cohort of Google’s Startup Accelerator Programme. These innovators Bani, MasteryHive AI, Regxta, and Termii, are leveraging AI to tackle critical challenges in fintech, and Communications.
Key Takeaways
• Four Nigerian Startups selected for Google’s Africa Accelerator 2026 Programme
• Out of 2600 applicants only 15 Startups were selected to participate in this year’s Cohort with Nigeria taking the most seats
• Over the Next 3 Months, these Tech Startups will receive adequate training, resources and support from Google to Scale their businesses
Since introducing the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program in 2018, 106 startups from 17 African countries have been selected to participate in a series of Training Corhorts. As these companies scale, their human and economic impact multiplies, the alumni’s have collectively raised over $263 million and created more than 2,800 jobs.
The Google Startups Accelerator Africa programme is hosted by Tech giants Google and selects only a handful of high potential Startups with innovative Minimum Viable Products (MVP).
The Google for Startups Accelerator Africa programme accepts fewer than 1% of nearly 2,600 applicants from across the continent and these four Nigerian tech startups, Bani, MasteryHive AI, Regxta, and Termii, have been selected for the 10th cohort.
Meaning that out of 15 Startups selected for the 10th Cohort of Google’s Startup Accelerator Programme, Nigeria has the Highest representation.
Let’s a Closer look at what These Selected innovative Nigerian Startups are currently Building,
Bani
Bani Africa is a pan-African fintech Founded in the year 2022. It provides businesses with a single API to collect local payments, mobile money, virtual accounts, and e-wallet transactions instantly and securely across multiple African markets. The company’s platform also offers a variety of features, including virtual accounts, mobile money, distributed ledger technology payments, and e-wallets, enabling merchants to collect payments from customers anywhere in the world and reconcile payments.
MasteryHive AI
Founded in the year 2023, Mastery Hive AI is a developer of artificial intelligence technology designed to enhance financial operations in banking, insurance, and reinsurance. The company’s platform incorporates generative models for fraud detection, transformer-based systems for compliance verification, behavioral risk scoring, adaptive authentication, automated claims assessment, precision underwriting, and intelligent data reconciliation with audit-ready reporting, enabling banks, fintechs, insurers, and reinsurers to streamline operations, reduce manual workloads, maintain regulatory accuracy, and enhance overall efficiency in financial services.
Regxta
Regxta is a Nigerian fintech company that provides digital financial services to underserved individuals and micro-businesses. Their offerings include micro-loans, savings accounts, and business support services aimed at empowering the unbanked population. Regxta was inspired by CEO Rukayat’s mum, Rukayat started The Bells Dynamic Option as a part time money lending business to provide finance to underserved micro business owners like her Mum. In January 2021, she broke new ground by launching Regxta as a digital platform to offer quick, easy and affordable financial solutions to the underserved micro business owners. The brand vision has also expanded beyond lending to include digital wallets, savings, payment solutions, micro insurance, pension, health services and mortgage. The platform also helps micro businesses to restructure and keep financial records.
Termii
Termii leverages cloud-based infrastructure to offer multi-channel messaging, voice calling, and data services. Businesses can use Termii to: Verify customer identity and transactions securely. Send automated product notifications. Termii is making global communications easy for businesses by modernizing how businesses and customers engage each other in emerging markets. Currently, termii serves 26,000 businesses that send over 1.9 billion messages and calls to end customers globally. Its omni-channel platform, is equipped with API capabilities, supports messaging across SMS, voice, email, and USSD channels.
For a long time, African startups were seen “consumer-first” but now they’re going deeper into finance rails, data, and the systems that everything else depends on.
This accelerator isn’t just giving funding, it’s giving startups access to technical infrastructure, AI and machine learning support, and the kind of mentorship that actually helps them scale because money alone doesn’t build deep-tech companies.
Since 2018, startups from the Google Accelerator program have raised over $263M and have created thousands of jobs across the continent.
So, this moment is truly a big win in the Nigerian tech ecosystem.
Other Businesses selected for the 10th Google Accelerator Cohort Include:
Anda Africa (Angola): A mobility and fintech platform formalizing, financing, and electrifying Angola’s informal moto-taxi workforce through proprietary AI-powered credit scoring.
Coamana (Kenya): Builds technology that helps governments and market associations digitize informal food markets.
Duck (Kenya): A real-time data intelligence platform giving consumer brands instant shop floor visibility to prevent stockouts.
Emaisha Pay (Uganda): Enables agro-traders to manage produce, collect multi-currency payments, and access embedded trade financing.
Loop (South Africa): Digitizes mobility and payments in Africa, helping people, businesses and communities access simpler, more connected transport and payment solutions.
Maad (Senegal): A full-stack omnichannel market expansion platform helping consumer brands grow sales across Africa through AI-powered market intelligence.
Meditect (Ivory Coast): Digitizes African pharmacies with cloud software and real-time data to improve medicine access and optimize inventory.
ReportsAI (Kenya): Helps impact organizations turn raw data into institutional knowledge and compliance-ready reporting through an AI-first platform.
Safiri (Tanzania): Building the digital infrastructure powering reliable transportation of people and goods across Africa.
Vambo AI (South Africa): Builds multilingual AI infrastructure powering translation, speech, and generative AI across African languages.
VunaPay (Kenya): Builds fintech and data infrastructure for cooperatives, enabling instant payments and financial services for smallholder farmers.
Gbolade Emmanuel, CEO of Nigeria-based Termii, noted: “At Termii, we’re building AI-powered infrastructure that ensures financial transactions don’t fail, from login PINs to payment OTPs and fraud alerts. The Google Startup Accelerator is helping us accelerate our AI roadmap and scale globally, and even in the first week, access to technical support and insights has been incredibly valuable for our next phase of growth.”
To support their vital work, this three-month hybrid program running from April 13th to June 19th, 2026 will provide these founders with mentorship from experienced mentors and industry experts. They will also gain access to technical workshops and resources focused on AI and cloud technologies, equipping them to scale their impact and prepare for follow-on funding.
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