US$1.3 Billion In Venture Capital Funding Found Its Way To Africa In 2019

Venture Capital is growing and nothing proves this more than WeeTracker’s Decoding Venture Investments In Africa 2019 report.

VC investment grew from US$725.6m in 2018 to US$1.34b – the first time it has crossed a billion on the continent. This is even more mind-blowing when you put into perspective the fact that just 5 years ago investment was at US$185m.

Highlights from the report include the following:

• Companies headquartered or focussed on Nigeria and Kenya raised USD 1.09 Bn (81.49% of the total VC money raised in Africa).
• Interswitch -a payment processing company- made the most from a funding round (US200m) with Visa as the investor
• Fintech startups occupied 5 (Interswitch, OPay, Branch and Palmpay) of the top 10 venture deal slots on the continent in 2019
• Logistics and ride-hailing sectors experienced strong growth this year, with cumulative investment amount reaching USD 133.26 Mn
• The top 10 African startup funding deals of 2019 contributed as much as USD 677 Mn — slightly higher than half of the USD 1.340 Bn raised in total from the 427 deals recorded overall.

In 2016, African startup funding actually dropped to USD 153 Mn before enjoying a resurgence which saw it climb to USD 203 Mn in 2017. That figure tripled to USD 725.6 Mn in 2018 and the latest figure has now gone north of a billion dollars. That’s an increase of over 1000 percent since 2015. That’s as close to a startup ecosystem on steroids as one can get!

WeeTracker

If you’re interested in downloading the report you can do so here.