Wee Tracker, a tech media platform with a marked focus on the African technology and startup ecosystem has released the 2018 African startups and VC ecosystem report which reveals that African startups have raised over $168 Million in 118 disclosed deals just halfway through the year, surpassing last year’s total of $167.7 Million, per the report. Nigerian startups secured the most deals while their counterparts in Kenya raised x3 more.
Some of the top-funded startups within the period include SureRemit (Nigeria), M-KOPA (Kenya), Africa Talking (Kenya), Lidya (Nigeria), and SWVL (Egypt). 28 startups raised over above $1 Million and fin-tech (25) is still the most attractive to investors, followed by healthtech (13), agritech (10), ecommerce (9) and SaaS (7).
In the two largest deals, Cellulant – a digital payments solutions company which operates in 11 African countries, raised $47.5 Million in its Series C round while Branch, an online micro-lending platform, has raised $20 million. The top investors are VillGro, EchoVC, Singularity, Omidyar Network, Knife Capital, CRE et al.
As different reports on startup funding in Africa are released annually, the total amounts differ based on methodology. Last year, Disrupt Africa’s pegged total startup funding at $195 million while Partech Ventures annual funding report—which includes startups that have a primary market in Africa whether or not they are headquartered or incorporated on the continent—showed that $560 million was raised last year. For its part, while it tracks companies incorporated in Africa and companies incorporated elsewhere but have their primary focus on Africa, WeeTracker does not include major private equity deals in fields like manufacturing in its reports, says Nayantara Jha, the managing editor – QZ Africa
