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Africa Fintech Weekly News Digest: Funding Receives US$1B Boost, While Flutterwave Dominates Headlines

by Fintechnews Africa 12 September 2021

Funding rounds made a splash in Africa fintech news last week. African fintech startups Wave, Pezesha and Prospa all raised funding, along with a mega round by Egyptian startup MNT-Halan.

The funding news came amidst a new report highlighting that African fintech companies have raised over US$1 billion in investor dollars since the start of the year.

Elsewhere, Flutterwave made the headlines twice with some pretty big announcements, asserting its dominance in Africa’s fintech ecosystem.

Africa funding boom 2021

African fintech companies have raised US$1.44 billion since January this year, higher than the overall amount they raised over the past decade, according to a news report (Ecofin Agency). Between 2011 and 2020, these fintech companies raised a total of US$1.06 billion, the report said.

A total of at least 196 investors have participated in multiple funding rounds this year, with 71 deals registered as of the first week of September, in addition to 23 undisclosed funding rounds.

This funding wave was largely driven by super-sized funding rounds from companies such as Leapfrog (US$500 million raised in March), and more recently Wave and OPay.

Just this week, mobile money startup Wave raised US$200 million in a Series A that was led by global names Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund, Stripe and Ribbit Capital (Fintech News). Pezesha and Prospa also made the news for million-dollar seed funding rounds last week. Prospa raised US$3.8 million in an oversubscribed round (Fintech News), while Pezesha chose not to disclose funding details of their seed extension (Fintech News).

In North Africa, Egyptian fintech and logistics super app MNT-Halan also tapped into the funding boom last week, raising a hefty US$120 million in private equity and venture capital (Fintech News). Moroccan POS fintech Lacaisse.ma also received an undisclosed amount in funding from Witamax One Investments (Tech In Africa).

Flutterwave takes the spotlight

2021 has been one of the most happening years for Nigerian fintech unicorn Flutterwave. It was named the title sponsor of the Africa Fintech Summit happening this year in Cairo (Technext). The sponsorship is one of several event partnerships the company has cinched this year, including sponsoring the Basketball Africa League, and the D’Tigers basketball team for the Tokyo Olympics.

Flutterwave also announced in a statement late last week that it would be partnering with African telecoms company MTN Group (Flutterwave). The partnership will allow Flutterwave’s business customers in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia to receive payments via MTN Mobile Money (MoMo).

Featured image credit: edited from Unsplash