Finally, it happened: Nigerian startups, in 2017, received more funding than their South African counterparts. Joining Nigeria and South Africa is Kenya at third position. Overall, African startups received $195 million in venture funding, up 51% from 2016, Disrupt Africa reports. Fintech led all categories.
We are in the era where finance would fuse with mobile. With Opera in-browser payment and amalgam of many fintech solutions engineered for the mobile-mainly African citizens, fintech would continue to see growth. We have seen these fintech startups receiving excess of $100 million in venture funding since 2015. Reporting on the same report, Quartz broke it down.
Aside from fintech, investors also favored e-commerce and agri-tech in 2017. E-commerce startups saw funding quadruple to $16.7 million.
Overall, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya remained the countries with highest funding raised, consistent with their record from previous years. Even though a higher number of South African startup raised funds, Nigeria’s funding surpassed South Africa’s, skewed by a hefty $40 million raised by coding school Andela—nearly the same amount as all Nigerian startups raised collectively in 2016. (Quartz newsletter)
We are making progress, from $0 to nearly $200 million. But yet, it would be really catalytic when African startups could raise a cumulative $500 million in a year. I expect that to happen before 2020.
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