9ja fintech is eating the world 🤑

Nigerian fintechs have raised $1.5bn of the total ~$5bn raised by all start-ups in Africa since 2019

First things first, we ought to be giving a standing ovation to start-ups in the ecosystem and their $564m raised in August through $100k+ deals. That’s more than 2.5 times the average monthly funding raised in the rest of 2021 so far. Hats off!

Obviously, with OPay’s $400m funding round, and Flutterwave’s, and Kudas’s, and Paystack’s, and Interswitch’s and more before that, it can sometimes feel like a lot of the VC activity in Africa - at least in terms of big tickets and amount raised - is about Nigerian fintech. Well, this is not just a feeling:

• First off, in absolute numbers, Nigerian fintech have raised over $1.5bn since early 2019, which is more than the sum of all deals in South Africa + Egypt over that period.

• After a little slump in 2020 ($318m vs. 2019’s $468m), Nigerian fintechs are on fire again this year: in the first 8 months of 2021, they have almost already raised as much as 2019 and 2020 combined. So far this year, 37% of all the VC funding in Africa has gone to Nigerian fintechs alone.*

• Since 2019, 60% of all the funding raised by fintech start-ups has gone to Nigeria. Over the same period, fintech start-ups in Nigeria have captured 75% (!) of all the funding raised in Nigeria.

While founding and management teams of Nigerian fintechs tend to be overwhelmingly local, they also are overwhelmingly male: of the $1.5b+ of funding raised by Nigerian fintech since 2019, 99.6% went to start-ups with male CEOs, and 99.4% to all-male funding teams.

We’ve crossed the 50,000 total unique post views last week, and we can’t thank you enough for your support. We’ve also brought in some reinforcement, which is great: Welcome Crescence! If you have questions or comments, as always please do not hesitate to get in touch. And for the full database of deals, that’s here.

* Btw this is not just ‘the OPay effect’: even if we removed the $400m deal from the equation, Nigerian fintech would still be representing 22% of all funding in 2021 so far, more than its share in 2020 funding.