Rain always falls where it's wet

Many African ecosystems have shown strong growth patterns since 2019, despite the ongoing pandemic

2021 has been a year of tremendous growth for the start-up scene in Africa (2.5x YoY vs. +92% globally) and this week we wanted to look at what this growth trajectory over the past 3 years has looked like for individual ecosystems. If we start with the ‘Big Four’: South Africa is the only market to show strong consistent growth over the period: from less than $100m in 2019 to nearly $1bn in 2021! The other three show growth over the period but with different patterns: Kenya had a particularly strong 2020, topping the table, but failed to continue at the same levels in 2021. Nigeria showed a slump in 2020 but rebounded massively in 2021, driven by a few strong ‘mega deals’. Egypt is more of a late bloomer but its 2020-2021 growth is the strongest of the pack: x4.2 YoY! Beyond the ‘Big Four’, a few countries have grown consistently in 2019-2021: Senegal (even without counting Wave’s $200m Series A), Tanzania, Cameroon and Tunisia. Though they had shown little to no activity in 2019, Morocco, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire displayed strong growth levels between 2020 and 2021 (over 3x YoY for the former two). On the other hand, Uganda and Ghana had suffered setbacks in 2020, and they have not yet manage to go back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. The biggest counter-performance comes from Ethiopia: once a $10m+ ecosystem in 2020, it only recorded $3.5m of funding in 2021…

We wanted to end this week's post by paying tribute to Nnena Nkongho who regrettably passed away just before the start of the year. With Nnena the African start-up ecosystem loses a brilliant investor and ecosystem enabler, as well as a champion for its diversity. She will be sorely missed. Our thoughts go to her loved ones in those difficult times…

Sharing below a higher-resolution version of the 2021 map in case it’s helpful 👇