By Seth Onyango – Bird Newsroom

According to Wee Tracker, Africa is now home to seven unicorns: Jumia, Interswitch, Flutterwave, Andela, Wave, OPay and Chipper Cash.

Five of them became unicorns this year – including two in September alone – indicating levels of interest in the African startup market never seen before.

Startups in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya – considered the continent’s Big Four – have swallowed up the lion’s share of the more than $ 4 billion raised through 2021.

In November 2021 alone, African startups raised $ 605 million, which is almost half of the total amount raised by African startups in 2020 – around $ 1.3 billion according to the research firm based. on data, Briter Bridges.

According to Briter Bridges, while fintech companies retain the lion’s share of total funding, clean technologies are attracting more and more capital from local and international investors, including a growing number of companies interested in accelerating their transition to renewable energy.

“Healthcare, data and IT infrastructure and agriculture follow as more private companies mature, but ticket sizes remain contained relative to fintech and cleantech.” , the company said.

According to Connecting Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya accounted for 80% of the total raised on the continent until the end of November, with 35% of the capital raised in Nigeria alone.

Nigerian startups brought in $ 1.37 billion in 2021, South Africa raised $ 838 million, Egypt – $ 588 million, and Kenya raised $ 375 million. Startups in Africa’s most populous country landed more than 200 contracts for the year, while the other three countries had over 100 transactions each.

Outside of the Big Four, other proactive markets were Senegal and Tanzania whose startups raised $ 222 million and $ 96 million respectively, according to Connecting Africa.

One of the biggest success stories has been Chipper Cash, which has raised a total of $ 250 million this year. The authors, Max Cuvellier and Maxime Bayen, decided not to attribute the increase to Ghana, claiming that the startup’s Ghanaian and Ugandan co-founders and its African headquarters divided between Ghana and Kenya “make it quite a Pan-African company. According to the Connecting Africa report, citing Big Deal Africa.

“Without Chipper Cash, Ghana raised $ 48 million in 2021; Algeria – $ 30 million; Morocco – $ 29 million; Tunisia – $ 23 million; Uganda – $ 18 million; Rwanda – $ 16 million; DRC – $ 12 million and Cameroon – $ 11 million.

The Briter Bridges report is available here. Big Deal data can be found here.

bird story agency