Nigeria’s startup funding reached approximately US$417.5 million in nine months, and a lion’s share of this came from fintech (Punch).
The funding total already beats the US$300 million these companies raised last year (fintech companies dominated Nigeria’s startup funding in 2020 as well). About 91% of this near-half-billion capital pool came from fintech companies. Edtech, healthtech and communications companies contributed the remaining 9%.
From the current vantage point, fintech investments alone are expected to surpass US$400 million this year, while revenues are expected to grow to US$543 million in 2022.
Some of the biggest African fintech startups have already contributed about US$1.4 billion to tech startup fundraises in the continent this year (Fintech News Africa). Nigerian fintech startup OPay alone raised a third of this, with a US$400 million ticket led by SoftBank.
Smaller deals are not unpopular either. We’ve seen a number of very early stage deals close this quarter so far, with Nigeria in the lead both by number of deals and total deal value (Fintech News Africa). Just last week, two Nigerian fintech startups –– crypto exchange Busha and API provider OnePipe – picked up seven-figure rounds as well.
There’s still about a month to go until 2022, but from the looks of it, fintech funding numbers have pretty much set the stage for Nigeria’s startup funding next year as well.
MEA Fintech News Highlights
Regional news
Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Africa is set to be launching its BimaLab insurtech accelerator program in Ghana and Nigeria in 2022 (Fintech News Africa).
Standard Chartered ‘Saadiq’ and the Malaysian Halal Development Corporation launch a US$100 million Islamic financial programme for SMEs and enterprises in Asia, the Middle East and Africa (The Fintech Times).
Adanian Labs Venture Building Program opens for 2022 January cohort applications in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa (CIO Africa).
UAE
SME lender LNDDO secures US$3 million seed round (Arab News).
Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 and Stripe partner to provide startups with access to payment gateways, and discounted access to Stripe’s startup user tool (ITP.net).
Investment platform Raseed secures US$1.1 million pre-seed funding (Arab News).
Kuwait
The National Bank of Kuwait launches Kuwait’s first fully digital bank for youth, Weyay (Fintech News Middle East).
Israel
US-Israeli supply chain fintech company 8fig raised US$50 million in its Series A round (Fintech News Middle East).
OurCrowd becomes the first Israeli venture firm to be approved and licensed by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) (Fintech News Middle East).
Egypt
Cairo-based SME expenses and accounts payable solution Hollydesk raised US$325,000 pre-seed funding (Daily News Egypt).
Buy now pay later fintech company valU becomes a payment solution provider for ecommerce platform Jumia and payments platform JumiaPay (Mubasher).
Nigeria
Appzone Group to launch a new blockchain platform for payment processing, Zone (Punch).
Crowdyvest relaunches digital wealth management and savings mobile app (Techbuild Africa).
South Africa
African Rainbow Capital subsidiary to acquire Crossfin Technology in a deal valued at ZAR 1.5 billion (Business Tech).
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“African fintech hubs have grown rapidly in the past few years, leading to pockets of fintech development across the continent. According to Findexable’s Global Fintech Rankings Report, 14 of the top Middle East and African fintech hubs came from the African continent. These included the usual suspects, but more interestingly, seven of these fintech hubs were new additions…”
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This article was originally published on Fintech News Africa.
Featured image: edited from Unsplash
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