🗺 2022 Map series 🗺 Southern Africa 🗺
South Africa sneezed. Southern Africa got ill.
This post is part of our special Thursday series focusing on start-up funding in Africa’s five regions in 2022. We published our analysis on Western and Eastern Africa earlier this month, and at the end of this post you can decide whether Northern or Central Africa will be next
According to our data, 2022 wasn’t a good year for Southern Africa as start-up funding in the region fell -46% YoY. With just under $600m raised in 2022, the region now ranks fourth, falling far behind the other three main regions; back in 2021, it had ranked second. Its share of continental funding dropped from 23% in 2021 to 12% in 2022 (-11pp). Worryingly, it is the only region where the number of $100k+ deals disclosed in 2022 was lower than in 2021 (131 vs. 160, -18% YoY), while all other regions recorded double-digit growth in this space.
The below-average performance of Southern Africa is very closely linked to South Africa’s, given the Big Four’s heavy share of regional funding (over 90% since 2020). Funding raised was almost halved between 2021 and 2022, from nearly $1.1bn to $555m. The number of $100k+ deals dropped -14% YoY. The largest 2022 deals in the country were the $100m top-up to MFS Africa’s Series C and Clickatell’s $90m Series C.
South Africa’s regional dominance remains unchallenged overall (95% of the regional total in 2022 vs. 98% in 2021) as its two runner-ups - Zambia & Namibia - attracted about 40x less funding each (~$15m) than the rainbow nation. With only 2 $100k+ deals, their numbers are driven by Union54’s $12m seed extension for Zambia, and JABU’s $15m Series A for Namibia. Interestingly, both rounds were led by Tiger Global. Zimbabwe recorded three $100k+ deals in 2022 (down from 6 in 2021); one each for Botswana and Mozambique. Four countries in the region have recorded no deal at all over $100k in 2022.
While the region’s performance in 2021 (23% of all funding on the continent) had compared favourably to its share of Africa’s population (14%) or even GDP (22%), with only 12% of Africa’s funding in 2022, Southern Africa did not match its GDP - and to a lesser extent population - weight. South Africa alone does much better: 11% of funding vs. 14% of GDP and 4% of population. The region averages $3.1 of funding raised per capita, just below the continental average ($3.4pc) while in South Africa alone, this number stands just above $9pc.
Thanks again to all of you for your support and your help in sharing this content. It’s a great feeling to see our graphs and maps pop up on our feed on Twitter or Linkedin; I even saw one in my WhatsApp updates the other day(!). Anyway, enough babbling for today; I’ll just drop the link to the discounted access to the database, and let you vote for the next map: