Doage, a new insurance technology advisory and commercialisation platform set up by insurance executive Dominic Agesa Kavugwi, has opened its doors with a brief to help African InsurTech startups turn ideas and capital into lasting commercial growth.
The move lands as the sector keeps drawing heavy investment even as founders come under tighter pressure to show revenue and staying power. AfricInvest’s 2026 African InsurTech Landscape report puts more than US$300 million into African InsurTech startups over the past five years, with annual funding hitting a record US$80.6 million in 2025. The same report sees Africa’s insurance market rising from US$92.9 billion in 2024 to US$160.9 billion by 2033.
The wider African startup scene has grown pickier. Only 178 African technology startups raised money in 2025, even as total investment bounced back above US$1.6 billion, a sign that backers now look harder at businesses that can actually deliver returns.
Kavugwi said the bottleneck for many teams is no longer building a clever product or closing a round. It is getting that product into the market. Africa does not lack innovation, he said. What it still lacks is commercialisation.
Doage will advise InsurTech startups, insurers, investors and international technology firms on commercial strategy across African markets. That work covers go-to-market planning, enterprise distribution, strategic partnerships, market entry and expansion, investor readiness and revenue growth.
The company presents itself as a commercialisation partner rather than another accelerator, stepping in after product work and fundraising to help win customers, distribution deals and steady income. It also intends to sit with venture capital firms and accelerator programmes to back portfolio companies after the cheque is written, turning funding into measurable sales.
Investors are good at putting money to work, Kavugwi said. Accelerators are good at spotting and preparing entrepreneurs. Insurers understand risk. Founders understand the problems they are solving. The open question among all of them, he argued, is who owns commercialisation.
Doage is also building what it calls an Africa–Global InsurTech Corridor, meant to link African startups with overseas insurers, investors and technology companies, and to help foreign insurance technology firms enter African markets through local partnerships instead of standing up operations from nothing.
AfricInvest notes that 86 percent of African InsurTech venture funding still sits in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt, a reminder of how much room remains to take insurance innovation into other countries on the continent.
Kavugwi, whose career has run through insurance, bancassurance, embedded cover, digital distribution and strategic partnerships, said the next chapter should be judged by businesses that last, not by fundraising headlines alone. The next phase of African InsurTech cannot be only about how many startups are accelerated or how much money is raised, he said. The industry also has to ask how many sustainable insurance businesses are built, how much revenue they bring in, how many markets they enter, and how much enterprise value they create.
The Nairobi-based venture is wagering that commercial execution, more than access to capital on its own, will decide who wins the next stretch of Africa’s growing InsurTech market.
