7 Best B2B Databases for Sub-Saharan Africa in 2026

A B2B database for Sub-Saharan Africa is a searchable store of business contacts in the 49 countries south of the Sahara, from South Africa and Nigeria to Rwanda and Zambia. Sales teams, agencies and data engineers who sell there need one. Most global vendors print no figure for the region.

That gap is the reason to count before you buy. People Data Labs and ZoomInfo publish country rows. Lusha, Apollo, Cognism and Coresignal print nothing for African countries on the pages we read. So the first number you trust should come from a free count.

This page ranks seven databases on Sub-Saharan Africa, with list prices checked in September 2026 and our own counts from 2026-10-21. Rivals have their own pages: Lusha, ZoomInfo, Apollo, People Data Labs, Cognism and Coresignal. For the wider continent, see best B2B data providers for Africa.

TL;DR

"1M records" means 1M work-email lookups that return a result, at list price.

What we evaluated

• Published regional coverage: a figure for Sub-Saharan Africa or its main countries, with a source we can link.
• Free regional test: whether you can size the region, or test your own list, before you pay.
• Email and phone depth: whether a figure counts mailable contacts or only profiles.
• API and MCP: whether a script or an agent can pull records from these countries directly.
• Price at volume: flat, credits, seats or quote, and the cost of 1M records.

We ran counts on LeadOcean only. We ran no query on the rivals, so we print no hit rates for them. Vendor figures are vendor claims, and each vendor counts a "contact" its own way.

The test: size the region for free

On 2026-10-21 we ran count_leads with country set to 49 Sub-Saharan codes. We left out Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara, and kept Sudan in. The call spends no records. Each count means something different.

The mailable 1,308,483 people sit in about 135,000 distinct companies. That is the figure a cold-email team should plan around, not the 18.7M headline. The same call splits the region by country.

Run the same test on any rival's free tier with 25 contacts you really sell to, then count how many return a work email and a phone.

1. LeadOcean: best for API and agent buyers

LeadOcean holds 693M people and 67M companies, and every Sub-Saharan country is a country filter value among 254. Our count on 2026-10-21 found 18,736,648 people across the 49 countries, of whom 1,308,483 have a mailable email (verified, catch-all valid or catch-all). The sizing call spends no records.

The weak point is depth. The mailable share is about 7% of the regional count, and phones are 628,393 people. Plan on email first and treat South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the core. The call below sizes your own slice, with count=true as a query parameter.

curl -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true&limit=1" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"country": ["ZA", "NG", "KE", "GH"], "jobLevel": ["C-Team"], "emailStatus": ["verified", "catch_all_valid", "catch_all"]}'

The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp exposes 13 tools, including the free leadocean_count_leads, and signs in with OAuth 2.1. Ask an agent for "mailable C-Team people in Ghana and Kenya" and it counts before it spends.

Pros

• A free, exact count for any country or group of countries, with email status, level and phone filters.
• Agency is $497 a month flat, with 200 requests a second, 5 keys and no credit meter.
• REST and MCP on every plan, Free included.
• The app has an Exports page with a filter builder and a price preview before you download.

Cons

• No rep workspace, sequencer, dialer or CRM.
• Phones are limited outside the big markets, and v2 contact lookups cost a record even on a miss.
• Free is 1,000 records for life with no bulk CSV export, so a large pull needs Solo or Agency.

Best for: engineers, agencies and agents that sell across several African countries and want a fixed bill.

Pricing: Free is 1,000 records for life, no card. Solo is $97 a month, Agency $497 and Platform $1,997 (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Lusha: best for small batches with email and phone

Lusha prints no African country figure today. Its data page shows 515M+ contacts, 29M+ companies and 165M+ verified emails worldwide, with no country split (Lusha data page, October 2026). Test it on your own contacts.

An email costs 1 credit and a phone 5 (Lusha API docs, September 2026). The MCP server has 50 tools and shares the API credit pool (Lusha MCP docs, September 2026).

Regional test. Lusha Free gives 40 credits a month, enough to look up 25 contacts in Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg and read the hit rate yourself. API limits on Free are 40 requests a minute and 100 a day.

Pros

• Email, phone and company data in one lookup.
• Every plan includes an API key, Free included.
• MCP server with 50 tools.

Cons

• Credits end at a small plan: the top public step is 10,000 credits a month.
• No public 1M price, and Scale is custom.
• No African country figure on its data page.

Best for: small teams that look up contacts in Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg in batches of hundreds.

Pricing: Free $0 for 40 credits a month. Starter $49.90 a month ($37.45 billed yearly). Pro $69.90 ($52.45). Premium from $399.90 ($299.95), up to $977.40 for 10,000 credits (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

3. ZoomInfo: best for African mobile numbers

ZoomInfo prints an Africa row, not a Sub-Saharan one. It shows 824K+ companies, 18.1M+ contacts and 2.8M+ mobiles (ZoomInfo data page, October 2026). Its country map lists South Africa at 5.7M contacts and 1.5M mobile numbers, Nigeria at 2.2M and 142K, and Kenya at 1.2M and 174K (ZoomInfo data page, October 2026). Those are rounded vendor figures with no email split.

Its pay-as-you-go product, GTM AI, sells data credits from $20. A credit costs $0.45 at 100 credits and $0.25 at 100,000. Search and lookup are free, and a record is charged once per 12 months (GTM AI pricing, September 2026; GTM AI docs, September 2026).

Regional test. GTM AI Free includes 1,000 data credits and 5 requests a second, no card (GTM AI pricing, September 2026). Filter to your countries first and spend credits only on rows you keep. There is an official MCP server (GTM AI docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Published African figures for companies, contacts and mobiles.
• Free search, with a record charged once a year.
• Official MCP server and a free tier with API access.

Cons

• No Sub-Saharan total, and rounded country figures with no email split.
• The public slider stops at 100,000 credits, so 1M is an Enterprise talk.
• 2.8M mobiles is a small share of 18.1M contacts.

Best for: teams that need African mobile numbers and accept a sales call at volume.

Pricing: GTM AI pay as you go from $20, with 1,000 free data credits at signup (GTM AI pricing, September 2026).

4. Apollo: best for reps who also need sequences and a dialer

Apollo prints no African figure that we could find. You can measure it yourself, because people search costs 0 credits and returns a total_entries count (Apollo API docs, September 2026). Filter with person_locations[] by country.

An email costs 1 credit and a phone 8, and credits are pooled across the team (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). At 1 credit per email, 1M lookups needs about 250 Professional seats.

Regional test. Apollo Free gives 75 credits a month and an API key. Search Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, read total_entries, then spend credits on your own 25 contacts. The MCP server works on any plan (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Free, countable search with a location filter.
• Sequences, dialer and rep workspace in one product.
• Official MCP server on every plan, Free included.

Cons

• No published Africa figure, so the first number comes from your own test.
• A phone costs 8 credits, and credits expire each billing cycle.
• Search rate limits on Free are 50 requests a minute and 600 a day (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).

Best for: sales reps who want African search and outreach in one workspace.

Pricing: Basic $65 per seat a month ($49 billed yearly), Professional $99 ($79), Organization $149 ($119, three seats minimum) (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

5. People Data Labs: best for licensed profiles

People Data Labs (PDL) publishes records by country. It lists 10,847,088 for South Africa, 6,970,731 for Nigeria, 3,472,275 for Kenya and 1,934,607 for Ghana (PDL country stats, October 2026). PDL says the underlying dataset has a rate of duplication.

These are profiles, not mailable contacts. Globally, 592,376,573 of 2,466,510,427 profiles carry an email, about 24% (PDL dataset stats, September 2026). Expect the Sub-Saharan email share to be a fraction of the country totals.

Regional test. PDL Free gives up to 100 credits a month, but contact data is obscured, so test match rate, not emails. Person Search allows 10 requests a minute (PDL usage limits, September 2026). There is no official MCP server in its docs index (PDL docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Country-level counts for the largest African markets.
• Dataset licences for your own warehouse.
• Enrichment allows 1,000 calls a minute on paid plans.

Cons

• Country counts are profiles, with duplicates, not contacts with emails.
• No official MCP server.
• Self-serve stops near 100,000 profiles, then it is an Enterprise quote.

Best for: teams that license African profiles into a warehouse and find emails elsewhere.

Pricing: Free up to 100 credits a month. Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits, or $78 a month billed yearly (PDL pricing, September 2026).

6. Cognism: best for Europe-first teams with a small Africa list

Cognism publishes no African figure. Its EMEA page names the UK, DACH, Benelux, the Nordics, France and Spain, and says nothing about Sub-Saharan countries (Cognism EMEA data, September 2026). Treat the region as untested until you see a sample.

The pricing page lists Standard and Pro with tailored pricing and no dollar figure (Cognism pricing, September 2026). The API allows 500 requests a minute per operation (Cognism docs, September 2026).

Regional test. Ask sales to run your 25 contacts before you sign, and ask for the hit rate per country. The MCP server has 15 tools for search, count and dictionary lookups (Cognism docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Deep European coverage if Africa is a small part of the plan.
• API and MCP server on the same credits.
• A revealed contact is not charged again unless the person changes jobs.

Cons

• No African figure and no African country named.
• No public price at any volume, so 1M cannot be priced.
• API and MCP need a package that includes them.

Best for: EMEA sales teams that sell mostly in Europe and want a few African accounts.

Pricing: No public price. Standard and Pro are quote only (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

7. Coresignal: best for raw profile volume

Coresignal sells employee, company and job records on credits. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records and 70M+ company records (Coresignal, September 2026). It prints no figure for Africa or any African country.

Its employee search has a location filter that takes cities, states and countries, so you can measure a country yourself (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Contact enrichment costs 20 credits a call and is included from Pro upward, or on demand in the free trial (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Regional test. The free trial gives 2,000 credits for 7 days, at 5 requests a second (Coresignal docs, September 2026). That covers up to 100 contact enrichments. The MCP server has 5 tools and works with trial credits (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Very large raw profile count and daily company updates.
• Job postings and live profile fetch, which most rivals lack.
• Search by filter is free.

Cons

• No phone field in its data dictionaries.
• No Africa figure, and a credit meter on every record.
• Large plans are marked contact-sales, and no price exists above Elite.

Best for: teams that want job postings and profile volume and will build email finding on top.

Pricing: Free trial $0. Mini $49 a month, Pro $499, Growth $1,000, Premium $1,500, Elite $5,000 for 10,000,000 credits (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• You pull the region through an API or an agent: pick LeadOcean. A free count by country, email status filters and Agency at $497 a month flat fit volume work.
• You want email and phone in small batches: pick Lusha, then test 25 of your own contacts.
• You need mobile numbers for African accounts: pick ZoomInfo, the only one here that prints an African mobile figure.
• Your reps need a workspace and Africa is one region: pick Apollo, and read total_entries first.
• You license profiles into a warehouse: pick People Data Labs and find emails with another source.
• You also need job postings or live profile fetch: pick Coresignal.
• Europe is the plan and Africa is a side list: pick Cognism, and demand a sample before you sign.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for API, agent and volume buyers, because it gives a free, exact regional count with email and phone filters, at $497 a month flat on Agency. Lusha wins for small batches with phones, ZoomInfo for African mobile numbers, and Apollo for reps who want search and outreach in one workspace. People Data Labs wins for licensed profiles, Coresignal for raw volume and job postings, and Cognism for Europe-first teams. Run the 25-contact test before you pay anyone, LeadOcean included. For how we define coverage, read what is B2B data coverage, and for a regional comparison see the European B2B data coverage report.

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