In 2023, despite a slowdown in global VC growth, African tech funding remained largely resilient and is starting to show signs of recovery. With over 3000 transactions since 2013, 68% of which have fallen in the last 3 years, the African Tech ecosystem has already attracted >$20 Billion in startup investments and will continue to be a highly attractive investment region in years to come (As Partech, Disrupt Africa, Briter Bridges, The Big Deal, and many others point out)
It's Hard Not to Be Excited About #AfricaRising.
With all 54 Ecosystems Still Mostly Nascent, There's Massive Untapped Potential Across the Continent:
Payment processing is still a major issue in 40+ African countries
Travel is expensive and inter-African trade is still much lower than African trade with the US, Europe or China
More than 55% of the African continent remains unbanked (a market size of >765m people, i.e. 2.3x population of the USA or 1.7x the population of the entire European Union)
There Is A Lot To be Excited About For Anyone Prospectively Looking to Break Into the Very Young Startup and Venture Capital Ecosystem. . .
World leading-high rates of participation in entrepreneurship across West, Central, East and North Africa
Increased accessibility of remote work
A rapidly growing digital talent ecosystem
Over 1000+ New Incubation Centres established in the last 10 years
As of January 2024, under <0.0009% of Africa's population is employed in VC or VC backed startups, compared with >0.75% in the US. This means that as of now, the likelihood of working in Venture Capital or for a VC backed startup up is 833x higher in the US. We're on a track to change that, by demystifying the VC ecosystem across the continent, and enabling more operators, entrepreneurs, working professionals and others to join the ecosystem as investors, founders or ecosystem builders.
We believe the African continent is on track to recover to 2021 levels faster than most other markets, and will reach new heights in the coming decade. As such, we are excited to play our part in enabling the birth of more private capital across the 54 ecosystems.