Fintech strikes back 🦹🏿
But there's more to life than fintech of course
To continue with our series of deep dives on H1 2025 numbers and trends (if you missed the earlier episodes they’re here, here, and here), this week we’ll have a closer look at sectors…
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We will start with fintech of course, because the sector alone attracted 45% of all funding (exc. exits) in H1, bagging around $640m. This is in line with what we’d seen in 2024 (47%) but higher than in previous years. If we look at the longer-term trend, - moving to 12-month rolling periods - we clearly see that after 2-2.5 years of relative decline (the share went down to 28% about a year and a half back, almost an all-time low), fintech is gaining serious ground again (51% of all funding in the past 12 months), not too far from its all-time high in terms of share of funding.
The five largest fintech transactions in the first half of the year were of course Wave Money’s mammoth $137m debt deal, followed by Bokra’s $59m sukuk raise (Egypt), Stitch’s $55m Series B (South Africa), LemFi’s $53m Series B (Nigeria), and the $50m bond issued by MNT-Halan’s Tasaheel (Egypt). Kenya continued to be an outlier in the Big Four with only $23m raised in H1 2025, compared to $100m+ for each of its peers. Actually since 2019, the share of funding claimed by fintech start-ups in South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria is around three fifths (61%, 57% and 56% respectively), while it is just 10% in Kenya. Why is that? Most probably because the strength of the mobile money ecosystem in Kenya is simply unparalleled with 95% of adult Kenyans owning a mobile money account and 82% using it at least once a week (source: GSMA).
Fintech deals remained significantly bigger on average ($1.7m median, $10m average in H1 2025) than non-fintech transactions ($0.5m median, $4.8m average). As such, in terms of share of deals, fintech seems a little less hegemonic, representing ‘only’ 27% of the deals in H1 2025. The share climbs up to 31% if we look only at $1m+ deals, and 46% (17 out of 37) for $10m+ deals. Just 21% of the smallest deals ($100k-$1m) though were raised by fintech ventures.
But what does life look like beyond fintech? Energy ($220m, 20%) comes at number two, unsurprisingly as it has consistently been in the top 3 for a few years now. The two most notable deals were Burn Manufacturing ($85m) and PowerGen ($55m), both in Kenya, where 50% of the funding raised since 2019 has gone to the energy sector, vs. 7%, 6% and 2% in South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt respectively (and 16% on the continent overall).
Third comes healthcare ($160m, 11%), boosted by the $100m secured by hearX through its merger with US-based Eargo (South Africa). We then find logistics & transportation - usually in the top3 - at number four ($116m, 8%), and proptech at number five thanks to a single company, Nawy, who raised $75m ($52m Series A + debt) in Egypt, by far the largest-ever proptech deal on the continent.
Finally, if we group all the deals we can tag as ‘climate tech’ together (most energy deals, but also some some in logistics, agri & food, or even fintech), we come to 21% of the funding in H1 2025 ($300m) and 28% of all $100k+ deals. While this is relatively low compared to about a year ago when those shares had peaked, it is hopefully a missed opportunity some savvy investors will know to seize… Beyond energy and the Big Four, we can mention promising deals such as watertech Kumulus Water’s $3.5m raise in Tunisia, or battery-swapping Kofa’s $8.1m pre-Series A in Ghana for instance.
That’s all for today. For those of you who need access to all the underlying data behind our analysis, you can access it at a discount here. Though if you (re)watch the July 22nd Linkedin Live, you might catch a promo code with a juicier discount there… #justsaying. In any case: Have a good day! Max