Alex Omenye
Nigeria lost the top position for the most funded startups in Africa to Kenya. This development was contained in an analysis of the African startup funding in 2023 by a research outfit, ‘Africa: The Big Deal.’
The report stated that startups in the East African country attracted the largest amount of funding in the year, topping the table with about $800 million.
The “Big Four” of Africa—Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa—were analyzed. The results indicate that Nigeria dropped from first place in 2021 and 2022 to fourth place since its startups raised the least amount of money relative to the other three.
The research agency described the shift in the fortunes of Nigerian startups in 2023 as significant, noting that they raised $410 million in total, which is less than half of what they raised in 2022 and 2021.
According to the research firm’s analysis of the performance of the four most successful startup nations in Africa over the previous year, Nigeria is the nation where the most shift occurred in 2023.
The amount raised was split by three years (-67%) to reach $410 million, as opposed to $1.2 billion in 2022 and $1.7 billion in 2021, even if the nation still claimed to have the greatest number of start-ups to raise $100k or more (146, or 29% of the continent).
