More than 600 tech companies with the majority of their operations and users in Africa raised $5.2 billion from venture capitalists in 2021, according to a report from Partech, a VC firm that tracks annual data.
The record sum is three times that of 2020 and was partly driven by renewed interest in growth stage funding for startups like Flutterwave, Yoco, Wave, and Andela. Where 2020 is remembered for one landmark acquisition amidst a pandemic that some feared would dampen Silicon Valley-type risk-taking in Africa, the likes of Softbank, Tiger Global, and Sequoia Heritage (a Sequoia Capital subsidiary) saw 2021 as the time to normalize megadeals in Africa by making bets that minted unicorns.