Where Are the Most Startups Founded in Africa?

2021 was a very successful year for African startups since they managed to raise around?$4.5B in funding. Several years ago it was difficult to find any numbers for #VC funding in Africa at all, and today the numbers are skyrocketing.

In 2019, the?top African countries for VC funds?were mostly Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt. In this week's newsletter, we will see if there were any changes and/or new additions to the top 3 list.

Following the news, we decided to analyze our public #webdata and see where are the most startups in Africa located, what countries raised the most startup funding, and see some specific examples of the largest African startups in size.

Where are the most startups founded in Africa?

For the purpose of this research, we defined #startups as companies that were founded during the period of 2018-2022.

Nigeria takes a clear lead in terms of newly founded startup companies, standing as high as 1288 new startups created from 2018 to 2022.

Egypt stands in second place with 667 startups and South Africa comes in a close third with 521 newly founded startups.

Which African countries accumulated the most startup funding?

Based on our #data, throughout 2018-2022, Nigerian startups were clear leaders in Africa, raising over $1 billion in funding.

However, an even more interesting finding is that Senegal, a country in which only 29 startups were founded throughout the analyzed period, managed to raise nearly $600 million, whereas Egypt, a country in which 667 startups were founded, raised around $50 million less in funds.

Another interesting thing is that Nigeria and Egypt have populations of around 211 million and 103 million people respectively, whereas Senegal is a significantly smaller country with a little more than 17 million people.

What are some of the largest African startups in terms of size?

There are 4 startups that stand out of the crowd with over 5000 employees: Polaris Bank Ltd. , Vicmie Corp , Truehive , and Getajob NG .

• Polaris Bank Ltd. ?offers commercial banking services in Nigeria, provides products and services to all key areas of the Nigerian economy, and also offers retail banking, investment banking, trade services, and more.
• Vicmie Corp ?provides professional digital services to small businesses and entrepreneurs with software and technology to help them reach their MVP.
• Truehive ?is a platform for freelancers that allows them to select projects and work on them. Clients can post projects for free and attract freelancers who want to bid on the projects.
• Getajob NG ?is a recruitment platform that connects recruiters to best-fit candidates and allows candidates to find verified job vacancies.

Want to learn how the number of startups and their funding amounts changed throughout 2018-2022? Read our data digest. ??

Data digests consist of information extracted from Coresignal's datasets. It combines information from various sources that we work with and gives you a brief overview of the different ways to leverage this data for analysis.

Coresignal is a leading public business data provider in the web data sphere with an extensive focus on firmographic data and public employee profiles. Leveraging data of 649M professional profiles and 98M company records enables companies to build data-driven products and generate actionable insights. Coresignal is exceptional in terms of data freshness, with 275M records updated monthly for unprecedented accuracy and relevance.