Nigeria’s start-ups outperformed others on the continent by attracting an investment of $684.4 million in 2019 from 66 deals, according to a recent report by Baobab Insights.
This has made Nigeria – Africa’s biggest economy- clinch the first position of start-ups investments, followed by closely by Kenya with $640million investments from 49 deals and Egypt with $174million invested in 82 deals.
On a continent level, Africa’s tech start-ups raised $1.93billion in 2019, representing a 63percent compound annual growth rate since 2015, the report says.
Fintech stat-ups raised 50percent of the total funding in 2019 with $809million secured over 79 funding rounds.
Healthcare, energy and logistics solutions also fared well, raising $264.2 million, $214.6million and $214.5 million respectively.
Start-ups based in Nigeria Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa closed 81.3 percent of all investment rounds across Africa, totalling $1.59billion of all funding raised in 2019.
“2019 has been a record year in terms of investments for African tech start-ups in particular for pre-seed and seed-stage companies,” the report states.
Fintech, transport and logistics, agtech and solar energy sector-based start-ups all fared well in 2019 as well as markets such as payment solutions, the report adds.
The figure shows that the Nigerian startup ecosystem is maturing and investors are placing more confidence in the country’s entrepreneurs,” Uche Aniche, founder of StartupSouth said.
“Investors are marvelled about our start-ups, making it big without infrastructure, knowing they will be much better if they get it and this is another reason investors are betting on the potentials of start-ups,” Aniche further said.
He added that most of the investments are into businesses involving largely fintech, logistics, agtech and energy because investors are largely betting that these start-ups can grow bigger.
Seventy-three percent of the funding was for seed capital investments with 16 percent series A and 11 percent series B/venture capital, the report states.
Josephine Okojie
