In a list defined by exceptional growth, one Lagos-born company has made the top spot in its category its own two years in a row.
Termii has been named by the Financial Times as one of Africa's fastest-growing companies for 2026, ranking #1 in the media and telecoms category for the second consecutive year. The recognition places the company among a group of African businesses showing sustained performance across multiple years in a global ranking that tracks growth across sectors and markets.
Termii is one of 30 African startups featured in the Financial Times' 2026 ranking, an annual list of 130 high-growth businesses produced in partnership with research company Statista. The list identified African companies with a minimum compound annual growth rate in revenues of 9.27% between 2021 and 2024, with qualifying companies required to have generated at least $100,000 in revenue in 2021 and at least $1.5 million in 2024. Termii's revenue grew from $1.29 million in 2021 to $2.53 million in 2024, according to the FT ranking data.
The product story behind the growth is one of infrastructure, not just messaging. Termii builds infrastructure for critical transaction flows, including one-time passwords, fraud alerts, transaction confirmations, and identity verification. The focus is not on message delivery as a standalone metric; it is on if the transaction completes successfully. Because when verification fails, transactions fail. And when transactions fail, customers do not wait. They move on.
Launched in 2017 by Emmanuel Gbolade, Ayomide Awe, and Atinuke Idowu, and headquartered in Lagos with operations across Africa and the United States, Termii has processed over one billion customer transactions across SMS, voice, and WhatsApp, enabling more than 16,000 businesses to engage customers globally.
The growth engine has expanded into new product lines. Gbolade explained that Termii's growth is anchored by its expansion into telecom infrastructure through Sotel, an eSIM and global SIM offering, and Termii Agent, an AI-powered support platform. The company plans further expansion across Francophone Africa and other emerging markets over the next year.
Termii's inclusion in the FT's 2026 list signals increased focus on companies operating beneath digital transactions, ensuring they complete reliably at scale. As more financial activity moves online globally, systems responsible for verification, authentication, fraud detection, and transaction confirmation are becoming core infrastructure for digital businesses.
The broader FT 2026 list saw fintech, IT, and software sectors continue to dominate, accounting for nearly 40% of featured companies, a concentration that underscores just how consequential the software infrastructure layer has become for African economic growth. Within that category, Termii's back-to-back #1 ranking in media and telecoms places it in a conversation not just about fast growth, but about what durable, foundational tech companies from Africa actually look like.
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