Everyone bites the dust.

In Q3, Africa's QoQ and YoY decline in funding was on par with global trends. Yet considering the whole year to date, Africa remains the strongest performing region.

Gone are the days when Africa was the ‘last continent standing’, still registering triple-digit YoY quarterly growth while start-up funding was shrinking by -29% YoY globally. No more African exception in Q3 2022 unfortunately: all regions are now more or less on the same boat (and it’s taking on water…). According to CB Insights, global start-up funding was down -55% YoY in Q3 2022, a fall ranging from -38% YoY in Europe to -83% YoY in Latin America. According to our numbers, Africa experienced a -53% YoY decrease in amount raised during the same period, therefore almost exactly aligned with the global trend. The same goes for QoQ decline actually, where CB Insight’s global estimate is the same as our estimate for Africa: -34% QoQ.

That said, and in particular because the 2022 slowdown started much later in Africa than in other parts of the world, Africa is the only continent to still show positive YoY growth if we compare Q1-Q3 2022 to Q1-Q3 2021: +27% YoY. All the other regions are showing year-on-year decline ranging from -13% YoY in Europe to -26% YoY in the US, -33% YoY in Asia and even -61% YoY in LatAm. Globally, start-up funding has contracted by -27% YoY if we compare 2022 to date to the same period last year.

Finally, another interesting way to look at the numbers is to compare how much start-ups have raised this year so far (Q1-Q3 2022) with what they had raised in 2021 as a whole, as it gives a good indication of how likely regions are to eventually match - or exceed - last year’s performance. Once again, Africa is an outlier. With just over $4bn at the end of Q3 2022, start-ups in Africa had already secured 87% of the total amount they had raised in 2021, which means they could still be on track to set a new record in 2022. Comparatively, at a global level, the amount raised in the first three quarters of the years only represents 52% of what was raised in the whole of 2021. In LatAm, this number is as low as 31%.

Two graphs for the price of one this week. Three actually, if you count the one we shared on social media a few days ago. But sometimes one three pictures are worth one three thousand words I guess. If you want to stay up-to-date with the latest funding trends globally, I cannot recommend enough CB Insights’s 262-page State of Venture goldmine… though for Africa-specific analysis, I have to point you to our very own data - which I used for this analysis - and that you can also acquire here, at a discount.