Africa’s startup ecosystems are worth a total of $6.6 billion – GSER Report

Africa’s startup ecosystems are worth a total of $6.6 billion with cities of Cape Town, Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Accra accounting for $6 billion, according to Global Start-up Ecosystem Report 2021 (GSER 2021), compiled by Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

The 2021 GSER is based on the assessment of 275 ecosystems across more than 100 countries. The report analyses and evaluates the start-up ecosystems based on experience and talent, performance, funding, market reach, and resource attraction.

Fintech remains one of the major sectors in Africa.

Meanwhile, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria’s payment system has received around $500 million in investments between 2015 and 2020. That is indeed amazing. We are in the application utility era and right at the infancy stage. Tomorrow looks very promising in the startup scene.

“The high level of confidence in our payment system, between 2015 and 2020, has attracted the investment of about $500m in firms run by Nigerian founders.

“Studies have already shown that only 1% of fintechs have been critically affected by COVID-19 and 2% severely affected. By comparison, around 17 per cent of other high-growth companies fall into these categories. It is therefore unsurprising that many fintechs have experienced a surge in demand as working practices and customer banking habits changed.

“As a country with one of the largest millennial population in the world – an estimated 62 per cent of the Nigerian population below 25 years of age, fast smartphone growth driven by increasing affordability and increasing mobile penetration and fast transition to 5G technology – Nigeria remains primed to be an active playground for digital transformation and cannot afford to ignore.”

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