Investor Updates: African startups raise $1b in 7 weeks.

African startups raise $1b in seven weeks 

Highlights

• It has taken startups in Africa barely 7 weeks to raise their first $1 billion in 2022 through more than 130 deals, according to data collated by Africa: The Big Deal.
• By comparison, it took the ecosystem 10.5 months to get there in 2019, over 8 months in 2020, and 5 months in 2021. 
• In the first 7 weeks of this year, two mega deals ($100m+) have already been disclosed: the $100m Series B from Tunisia’s InstaDeep in late January, and last week’s $250m Series D announced by Flutterwave, now Africa’s most valuable unicorn. 

Source: Africa: The Big Deal

Our Takeaway

Most of the funding secured by African startups so far or 76%, and of the deals (78%) have been claimed by startups headquartered in one of the ‘Big Four’ (Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt). Tunisia (almost entirely driven by the InstaDeep deal) and Ghana (6 deals worth $56m) are also notable mentions. Unsurprisingly, fintech represents almost half (47%) of the funding raised to date, roughly in line with 2021 numbers.

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Coinbase joins $7.5m investment round in Africa web3 super app Jambo

Highlights

• Jambo, a three-month-old company building a Web 3 super app for Africa, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding from an array of prominent backers in the crypto industry, including Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Three Arrows Capital.
• A super app is a one-stop mobile application for multiple services such as ride-hailing, banking, communication, and food delivery. Examples include China’s WeChat, India’s Paytm, and southeast Asia’s Grab.
• Jambo wants to introduce young Africans to Web3 financial ecosystems through play-to-earn gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi) services including currency exchanges and remittances.

Source: Coindesk

Our Takeaway

Africa is widely expected to be disrupted by web3 in a similar fashion to what’ played out in Southeast Asia, where startups like Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games have raised millions of dollars in VC funding. The growth of web3 on the continent is contingent on its fast-growing, largely young, and digital-savvy population, high rate of unemployment, deepening smartphone and broadband penetration, and increasing crypto adoption. Jambo, which is now valued at $50 million, is one of the few positioned startups for this predicted boom.

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Kenyan open finance startup Credrails raises seed funding

Highlights

• Credrails, a Kenyan open finance infrastructure startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding as it works towards connecting the whole of Africa to its API.
• Launched in 2020, Credrails connects bank, mobile money, and offline data into a single API that it then exposes to other businesses to build a variety of use cases, such as lending analytics, KYC, and KYB.
• The startup has physical operations in Nigeria and access to 250 million accounts in 33 countries. It is working towards connecting all of Africa. Investors include SoftBank and Unicorn Growth, as well as Samos Ventures and Precursor.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Across Africa’s tech startup ecosystem, several open banking/finance startups have sprung up in recent years allowing developers to build for the continent with ease and quickly. Many experts believe the future of financial services in the region rests on interoperability across several players and services, leading to faster and more affordable movement of money around Africa and beyond.