Where Africa's Startup Activity Is Concentrated

The Africa Tech Festival 2023 kicked off in Cape Town, South Africa this week. Bringing together more than 15,000 players from the various sectors of the world of digital technologies, the festival is widely considered the continent's most important tech event. To mark the occasion, we’re taking a closer look at start-up activity in Africa, and more specifically at the funds raised by start-ups in African countries in 2022.

The following infographic is based on AfricArena data covering transactions worth $100,000 or more. It shows how start-ups in Nigeria received the most investment in 2022, with $1.2 billion raised by start-ups in the country last year. This represented 68 percent of the total funds raised by start-ups in West Africa. Nigeria could also be described as Africa's incubator of unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion): in 2022, Africa produced seven of them, and five of them were from Nigeria.

Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, other members of the African "Big Four", were also hot spots for start-up investment: with 1.1 billion, 823 million and 555 million respectively raised, the three countries established themselves as major players in the African economy last year.