The VC funding raised by African tech startups in 2016 totalled US$ 366.8 million, compared to US$ 276.5 million in 2015, a +33% growth YoY. To put some perspective, if we compare to year 2012, the tech VC funding amount in Africa has grown by a factor of x8.7 over the past 4 years. In 2016, a total of 77 African tech startups got funded, from Seed+ (US$ 200K+) to Growth stages (largest round was US$ 40M), compared to 55 startups in 2015, a +40% growth YoY in deals.
Looking at it from a stage-angle, the African tech investment keeps growing very fast with a distributed growth across all round types. Deep diving into round size, the average size in Africa for Seed+ round was US$ 0.83 million in 2016 with 38 transactions, Series A @US$ 3.7 million (24 transactions) and Series B @US$ 11.1 million (7 transactions).
The geographic distribution is still focused on top 3 markets: 1) Nigeria with US$ 109 million in funding (29.8% of total investment), followed by 2) South Africa with US$ 96 million (26.4% of total) and 3) Kenya with US$ 92 million (25.3% of total). These top 3 investment destinations still account for 79.4% of the continent’s total funding.
In terms of deals, South Africa saw the highest number of deals with 28 transactions (36.4% of total transaction), followed by Kenya with 21 deals (27.3% of total) and Nigeria with 13 deals (16.9% of total).
The investment landscape is actually broadening with in particular Francophone African countries getting traction, and some destinations appearing for the first time this year: Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Morocco and Tunisia.