Don't we all love a good map?

The Big Four are coming on top, but healthy competition is building up throughout the continent

As we wait for the ecosystem to cross the $4b mark in terms of funding raised in $100k+ deals this year (we’re 99% there!), we thought an updated map showing the amount raised per country would be nice… Most of you won’t be too surprised to find the “Big Four” usual suspects (Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya) dominate the charts with 80% of the total raised on the continent so far this year (35% for Nigeria alone!). Next in terms of total amount raised are Senegal ($222m) and Tanzania ($96m), with a very big difference compared to the Big Four though: in both cases a single deal represents more than 90% of the total raised this year (Wave and Zola Electric). With 18 and 5 $100k+ deals respectively, they are far behind the Big Four: Nigeria boasts 200+ deals; the other three 100+ deals each. Eight countries on top of Tanzania have seen between $10m and $100m raised in 2021TD, with strong disparities though: for instance, start-ups in Ghana have raised close to 40 deals this year so far, while the $30m raised in Algeria come from one single deal (announced yesterday). You then have an extra nine countries with $1m to $10m raised, followed by a final six with less than $1m raised, often through one single deal - except in Zimbabwe (6 deals) and Botswana (2). Finally, it is worth noting that despite initially allocating Chipper Cash’s $100m + $150m = $250m to Ghana, we have decided not to pin them to a specific country as its Ghanaian and Ugandan co-founders and its African HQs split between Ghana and Kenya make it quite pan-African, which is probably an interesting trend to watch in itself…

The ecosystem feels unstoppable these days, and you should hear me going ‘What?!’ and ‘Wow…’ each week when I write these posts. Whether you’re an investor, a start-up, an analyst, or a researcher, if you want to do your own analysis on our database of 1,100+ deals worth almost $7bn, you can find out more here. See you next week!