The African Tech Startups Funding Report 2020 by Disrupt Africa

This article is a summary of the funding report by Disrupt Africa. I'm noting only the points I've been inspired by.

https://disrupt-africa.com/funding-report/

As a overview, the funding size is clearly increasing in terms of both numbers and capital.397(YoY+27.7%) startups raised an impressive US$701,460,565(YoY+42.7%).

We can see stand-out rounds as below. They are fundraising large-scale amount of capital.

e.g.)

Vezeeta (US$40,000,000), Egypt, e-health

Flutterwave (US$35,000,000), Nigeria, fintech

Skynamo (US$30,000,000), South Africa, retail-tech

Twiga Foods (US$29,400,000), Kenya, agri-tech

Komaza (US$28,000,000), Kenya, conservation tech

The number of investors in Africa by year is increasing as well. At least 370 active investors(YoY+42.8%) are already there.

Funded African tech startups are mostly accumulated in 4 countries, it is called as "Big-four", Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt.

The number of funded startups by sector is as below. You can find significant growth in these sectors such as E-health,Recruitment&HR, Entertainment, and Prop-Tech.

FINTECH - 99, 24.9%

E-COMMERCE & RETAIL-TECH - 55, 13.9%

E-HEALTH - 41, 10.3% (YoY+257%)

LOGISTICS - 29, 7.3%

ENERGY - 22, 5.5%

RECRUITMENT & HR - 18, 4.5% (YoY+272%)

ED-TECH - 17, 4.3%

AGRI-TECH - 16, 4%

TRANSPORT - 15, 3.8%

ENTERTAINMENT - 10, 2.5% (YoY+1,765%)

AI/IoT - 10, 2.5%

PROP-TECH - 10, 2.5% (YoY+191%)

MARKETING - 6, 1.5%

The entertainment sector was the biggest-growing one in Africa in 2020.

From this part, we can see the landscape of each country's situation.

Firstly in Kenya, Kenya has had the fewest funded startups among the “big-four”, but it consistently raised high average ticket size. The average deal was down slightly (YoY -2.1%) and fintech’s share is far lower and investor activity is much more distributed than other "big-four" countries.

In Nigeria, they are raising at smaller ticket sizes (YoY -30%), and fintech sector is dominant.

In Egypt in 2019, +40% of funding was a small amount raised from the accelerator programme.

Lastly in South Africa, 26 startups (32.1%) secured +$1M (more than any other country), and fintech sector is dominant similar to Nigeria.

In the rest of African countries, growth in the number of African startup funding rounds of US$1 million or above by year is rapidly increasing. And the biggest increases in total startup funding between 2019-2020 are from Ethiopia, Morocco, Senegal, Rwanda and Ivory Coast.