🕴️2024🕴️ The Top Investors of the Year
Less investors have invested on the continent in 2024; and on average they have been less active than in previous years
Previously, on Africa: The Big Deal: We held our 2024 Round-Up even on Thursday. Did you miss it? You can rewatch the live and download the deck here:
Behind each of the 430+ start-ups in Africa that raised at least $100k in 2024 is an investor - more often than not, multiple investors - providing the much-needed capital to finance their growth. Last year, we found 520+ investors involved in at least one $100k+ deal on the continent (exc. grants & exits). This is a large community of investors supporting the ecosystem, but not as large as it used to be compared to 2023 (610+), or to 2022 when 1,000+ investors had participated in at least one deal, twice as much as in 2024…
And investors are also less active. First of all, the share of investors who have only participated in one $100k+ deal (69%) during the year is at its highest since at least 2021: +4pp and +12pp compared to 2023 and 2022 respectively. Focusing on the most active investors, we observe a similar trend: while there had been up to 28 investors participating in more than ten $100k+ deals on the continent in 2022, this number has fallen to 8 in 2024, in line with 2023.
Who are these serial investors? According to our records, the most active investor last year - and the only one investor to take part in more than 20 $100k+ deals - was 54 Collective (previously Founders Factory Africa) with 26 deals i.e. more than two deals a month on average (!). Another two Top8 investors had already made the list in 2023, 2022 and 2021: Techstars and Launch Africa*. To these we can add Catalyst Fund* that was one of the Top8 investors in 2023 as well. Apart from 54 Collective, they have all participated in less deals in 2024 than in 2023. The other four investors that make up the rest of the Top8 have however increased their activity over the period: we’re talking about Digital Africa, Baobab Network, Renew Capital, and EdVentures. We should add that some of the investors on this list also ventured below the $100k bar, and have in fact done more deals overall than the $100k+ deals we’re focusing on here.
A few other investors also barely made the list, with close to 10 investments: Y Combinator (9 deals, far from the 2021 and 2023 levels: 37 and 43 respectively), 500 Global, and Axian Group in particular.
Yes, there were less investors active on the continent last year, and the most active investors were not nearly as active as they once were, yet it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that investors have abandoned the continent. Indeed, there is still a strong community and a lot of ‘dry powder’ to be deployed with quite a few new Africa-focused funds announced in the past couple of years. In fact, the reason why some investors have been less active is simply because they’ve been raising their next fund. Finally, it is also worth remembering that the investors of the past - including those who might not have been active recently - often still have a vested interest in the continent, at least until an exit materialises…
While we strive to build the most comprehensive dataset of deals on the continent, data - especially on December deals for instance - can sometimes take a few weeks to reach us, which means it is not impossible that an investor or two might end up appearing on an update of this analysis. That said, we are confident the overall trends will remain the same. And of course, we keep encouraging investors and ventures who think we might have missed something to reach out to us! Now, I’m leaving you with a discount code (here) to our infamous database. See you soon! Max
* Full disclosure: Africa: The Big Deal’s co-founders are LPs in Launch Africa, and Maxime is an operating partner of Catalyst Fund.
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