🧨 1 billion USD in 7 (yes, seven!) weeks

As of February 18, start-ups in Africa had already raised over $1 billion through 130+ deals

‘Start-ups in Africa are raising faster than ever, reaching the $1bn mark in less than 5 months’. This is how the caption from my June 7, 2021 post read; the excitement behind it sounds almost silly in retrospect. Indeed, it has taken start-ups in Africa barely 7 weeks to raise their first billion in 2022, through more than 130 deals. In comparison, it had taken the ecosystem 10.5 months to get there in 2019, 8 months in 2020, and 5 months in 2021. In the first 7 weeks of 2022, two ‘mega deals’ ($100m+) have already been disclosed: the $100m Series B from Tunisia’s InstaDeep in late January, and of course last week’s $250m Series D announced by Flutterwave, now Africa’s most valuable unicorn. They ‘only’ represent about a third of the funding raised though. Most of the funding (76%) and of the deals (78%) have been claimed by start-ups headquartered in one of the ‘Big Four’ (NG, ZA, KE, EG) so far, though Tunisia (almost entirely driven by the InstaDeep deal) and Ghana (6 deals worth $56m) are also doing pretty well. Fintech represents almost half (47%) of the funding raised to date, roughly in line with 2021 numbers.

🔮 Now for the take-this-with-a-pinch-of-salt crystal ball moment: What could this mean? Well, if fundraising were to continue at the same pace throughout the year, we’d be looking at around $7.3 billion in 2022. It does sound high, but the same calculation in previous years would actually have consistently underestimated the final result; by $0.2bn (-15%) in 2019, by $0.3bn (-20%) in 2020, and by $1.9bn (-44%) in 2021. Just saying…

$1 billion in 7 weeks. Sorry. I still can’t get my head around this. If you want to know how this is even possible, you can access the ‘Africa: The Big Deal’ database here (with a little discount), and see for yourself. Given how the year’s started, it’s hard not to get very excited about what’s to come!