African Startups Raise $2.2bn in 2024

The Big Deal noted that this excludes exits – which is when investors realise a return on their investments, most likely when the startup has become profitable or when there is a change of ownership.

The funding slowdown has occurred for consecutive years due to a wider global funding freeze impacted by macroeconomic developments and geopolitical events as well as a change in market offering trend leading to funding going elsewhere.

There have also been concerns about inflated valuations, business sustainability, and increased due diligence and scrutiny from investors.

For the review year, there wasn’t much funding activity as $800 million (36 per cent) of the total funding was computed in the first six months, while the remaining $1.4 billion came in the second half of 2024.

The $1.4 billion raised in H2 alone (+25 per cent YoY and +80 per cent compared to H1),  made it the second-best semester since the beginning of the ‘funding winter’ in mid-2022.

This development was considerably driven by two deals in the fourth quarter of last year, which minted two fresh unicorns in the African startup space, in the form of Nigeria’s Moniepoint and South Africa’s Tyme Group.

This was the first such event since early 2023, as the companies joined the exclusive club that has MNT-Halan, Interswitch, Flutterwave, Chipper, OPay, Andela, and Wave as members.

Some of the raises reported include Yellow Card raising $33 million in October to fund its growth and expansion, JuicyWay raising $3 million pre-seed to facilitate affordable cross-border payments, as well as Seedstars Africa Ventures raising $42 million in its first-ever round to help pioneering African startups in climate, food systems, energy, and payments infrastructure sectors.

The data showed that a total of 188 ventures raised $1 million or more in 2024 (excluding exits), which is just 10 per cent less than in 2023  (169 ventures).

On the exit front, there were 22 exits made public last year (up 10 per cent) versus 20 in 2023.