Baobab Developments: Africa FinTech 2020 Funding Report
In 2019 FinTech funding into African start-ups reached $751.433 million USD (excluding grants, prizes and non-equity funding). This more than doubled the total disclosed the previous year, which reached $364.156 million USD in 2018. As seen in broader trends across all sectors and geographies, the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in 2020 being a down year. The number of funding rounds into FinTech companies reduced from 114 to 113 between 2019 and 2020, and the total amount of funding dropped from $751.433 million to $390.242 million USD. However, perhaps these trends mask a number of other stories materialising in the FinTech space.
In this report we take a closer look at some of the key themes and trends from 2020.
Headlines from the Africa FinTech 2020 Funding Report:
- The number of FinTech funding rounds across 2020 reduced from 114 to 113 rounds, and the total amount of funding dropped from $751.433 million to $390.242 million USD.
- The proportion of early-Seed stage deals (deals totalling $0.550 million or less) increased as a proportion of the total amount invested from 4.1% to 6.0% between 2019 and 2020.
- The $170.0 million Series C announced by Flutterwave in March 2021 means that the number of African tech companies reaching unicorn status has now reached 3.
