It was a record-breaking year in 2018 for African tech funding, with 210 startups securing $334.5 million in investment.
Several multi-million dollar deals have been announced in the first four months of 2019, and it’s on track to be another bumper year for African tech investment.
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The biggest deal of 2018 was a $64.5-million funding round for South African fintech platform Jumo. So far in 2019, two funding rounds have helped secure more than $100 million for African companies.
Here are the 10 biggest African tech funding deals so far in 2019.
In March, Y Combinator-backed Nigerian fintech startup Kudi raised a $5 million Series A round led by French venture capital fund Partech Partners with participation from the Silicon Valley investor YC and Khosla Ventures. Kudi processes more than $30 million in payments a month. Its latest
$5 million funding round brings Kudi’s total investment since its 2016 launch to $6.7 million, Ventureburn reported.
In March, Nigerian
TeamApt, a company that provides e-payment infrastructure for banks, raised $5.5 million in a Series A round led by Nigerian venture capital fund Quantum Capital Partners in February. This represents a first for TeamApt, which previously bootstrapped without raising angel or seed funding, according to a press release.
The year started off well for Uganda-based solar energy firm SolarNow. The company announced a $9 million credit fund led by SunFunder, with participation from responsAbility and Oikocredit, Techpoint reported. This represents SunFunder’s second investment in SolarNow, as the firm provided a similar $6 million facility at the end of 2017.
Ghanaian healthtech company mPharma raised a $12 million Series B funding round in January. The company aims to increase patient access to affordable high quality medications. The investment was provided by 4DX Ventures, an Africa-focused early stage venture firm with offices in Accra and San Francisco, according to Crunchbase.
In April, New York-based venture capital firm Persistent Energy Capital LLC and Nigeria’s Verod Capital Management invested $10 million in Daystar Power, an off-grid solar energy firm focused on West Africa, according to CNBCAfrica. The Mauritius-based solar company builds off-grid solar farms with batteries for energy storage, offering power solutions to commercial and industrial customers in Nigeria and Ghana.
In February, South African first responder platform RapidDeploy raised a $12 million Series A round from U.S. venture capital fund GreatPoint Ventures and Samsung Next, according to Ventureburn. The firm’s cloud-based software product, DispatchTM, enables public safety officials to reduce emergency response times for first responders. The company signed a deal in 2018 for an undisclosed amount with video and internet service provider AT&T to offer its first responder platform to 911 emergency service, according to IOL.
Ghana-based pay-as-you-go solar company Peg Africa raised a $25 million Series C funding round in March, bringing its total funding to date to $47.5 million, according to a press release. The latest investment from new and existing investors is
In January, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s investment firm, Generation Investment Management, led a $100 million funding round in Andela, a Nigerian tech startup company that outsources African tech talent — mostly to U.S. companies. The investment brought Andela’s venture capital funding to date to $180 million, Bloomberg reported.
In April, fintech firm Branch International, which was founded in Kenya, raised $170 million and announced a partnership with Visa to expand into Brazil and Indonesia. The deal is the biggest funding round of 2019 thus far. The company, now based in Silicon Valley, offers personal loans for as little as $2 up to around $700 via mobile in emerging markets, according to Quartz.