Between January and May of this year, the United States accounted for roughly 30 percent of venture capital deals worldwide and about 81 percent of the money committed, according to GlobalData research reported in late June. China ran second on volume, taking 23 percent of global deals, and drew 7 percent of the value. The United Kingdom did 7 percent of the transactions and 3 percent of the dollars. India, 8 percent of deals and 1 percent of the capital.
That gap between deal count and deal value is the single most useful number in international finance, and it is the reason capital travels the direction it does. Founders and sponsors everywhere can find a term sheet. Very few markets can absorb a large one.
Nigerian billionaire Saint Jermaine Endeley works that corridor from the New York end. He founded West Africa Securities LLC, a practice concerned with energy finance, asset structuring and cross-border capital markets, and his interest is in what stands between an asset in West Africa and the market where it would be valued most highly.
Depth, and what it buys
The concentration is not an accident of scale. It follows from three things the American market has that most others assemble only partially.
The first is a financing ladder that runs the whole way. Seed capital, institutional rounds, private credit, and a public market deep enough to take a company out at the end. A sponsor can plan a decade of capital structure in one jurisdiction under one set of rules. In most markets the ladder has missing rungs, and a company that outgrows the local rung has to redomicile to keep climbing.
The second is a single commercial market of that size operating under one broad legal framework. Consumer and enterprise demand is unusually homogenous, purchasing power is high, corporate buyers adopt new technology quickly, and intellectual property protection is strong enough to make it worth building something proprietary. A business proving itself in one American state is proving itself against most of the addressable market.
The third is the pipeline that supplies it. American research universities, corporate laboratories and national research centres produce fundamental science, and a flexible labour market moves that work into commercial application faster than most systems allow. It also draws technical talent from everywhere else, which compounds the advantage.
The part that does not travel
None of which helps if the money cannot get there.
Capital moving out of Nigeria runs into a documentation regime that a domestic American sponsor never encounters. The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a new Foreign Exchange Manual this year, effective 1 June 2026, and it requires capital arriving in the country to be registered on an electronic Certificate of Capital Importation within 24 to 48 hours of inflow. Miss that window and the manual is unambiguous about the consequence: the legal standing of the investment may be permanently compromised.
Other clocks sit around it. Export proceeds must be repatriated within 90 days for non-oil and 180 days for oil and gas, with a penalty of one percent of the sum involved. Banks that process a transaction on inadequate documentation face a flat fine of 100 million naira and a further 10 million for every affected transaction.
Those penalties are aimed at the bank rather than the client, and Endeley’s argument is that this is precisely why they bite. A compliance function carrying that exposure does not move quickly on an unfamiliar file, and the delay lands on the sponsor waiting to fund.
Three disadvantages that have nothing to do with the asset
The practical consequences show up in the same three places every time.
Speed to close. American private transactions clear on the sponsor’s ability to fund on a fixed date. Capital that has to pass a certificate regime, a documentation review and an emerging-market compliance check is competing against domestic money that clears the same afternoon. Deals are lost on the calendar rather than on price.
Verification drag. United States institutions apply anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer requirements to capital originating in emerging markets, and satisfying them takes legal, audit and compliance cycles that add weeks before a single dollar is placed.
Cost of capital. A sponsor without established relationships in the American debt markets reaches for bridge finance or hybrid mezzanine instead, which raises the hurdle rate on every transaction and narrows what can be bid for.
None of the three reflects on the underlying asset. They are frictions in the plumbing, and Endeley’s view is that they are the reason otherwise sound West African capital arrives at American opportunities late or not at all.
What the receiving end now expects
The American side has been changing faster than most people tracking it assumed, and mostly in the newcomer’s favour.
The Alternative Investment Management Association and Marex published their emerging manager survey on 30 June 2026, drawing on 180 managers and 50 investors. Average breakeven assets under management came in at 82.9 million dollars, up from 70.1 million two years earlier. Management fees averaged 1.43 percent, performance fees 16.24 percent. The average minimum fund size an allocator will consider fell to about 94 million dollars, down from 106 million.
The most striking movement was in patience. Fifty-four percent of allocators said they would invest in a fund with under a year of performance history, and 72 percent would consider a manager running less than 100 million dollars. The three-year track record that emerging managers have organised their launches around for two decades is no longer the fixed barrier it was.
For a first-time sponsor the arithmetic still runs tight. At an average 1.43 percent, a fund launching with 15 million dollars generates roughly 215,000 dollars in management fee across a year, against audit, administration, legal and regulatory filings before anyone is paid. The principals fund that gap, and how long they can fund it decides whether the firm reaches its third year. But the gap is closing earlier than it did.
Endeley’s own summary of what the work requires is four words long. Never give up.
About Saint Jermaine Endeley
Saint Jermaine Endeley is the founder of West Africa Securities LLC, working in energy finance, asset structuring and cross-border capital markets. He is a published author and is based in New York.
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This article was prepared from information supplied by West Africa Securities LLC.
