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Rabat – African startups are breaking records year after year, reaching $1 billion in funds this year in under two months.
In exactly seven weeks, African startups reached an accumulative figure of investments amounting to $1 billion through over 130 deals in the first seven weeks of 2022, according to The Big Deal, a news platform that covers Africa’s fast-evolving startup ecosystem.
The new record trumps the $1-billion in 21 weeks in 2021, and the previous $1-billion in 36 weeks in 2020, The Big Deal reported.
In the span of seven weeks, two African startups locked mega-deals of over $100 million each. Tunisia’s AI startup InstaDeep made headlines in late January after locking $100 million in investment funds from venture capital fund, AI Capital, pharmaceutical giant BioNTech, and Google.
The second startup to lock a mega funding deal is Nigeria’s fintech startup Flutterwave. Last week, the startup became Africa’s most valuable startup with the new groundbreaking $250 million addition to its capital.
But Flutterwave and InstaDeep’s combined funds in 2022 make up only a third of the $1 billion raised by African startups, The Big Deal noted.
Startups belonging to the ‘“Big Four” countries, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt have locked 76% of the investment funds and 78% of the deals.
Fintech startups continue to raise the lion’s share of funding, with 47% of new investment.
In 2021, African Fintech startups raised a total of $2.3 billion, more than double the funding raised by startups in other sectors combined.
With 37% of all the investment volume going to Nigerian startups, the West African country is once again topping the list of countries in terms of investment.
Given this impressive 2022 start, many experts expect African startups to raise $7.3 billion in funding by the end of the year.
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