More than three quarters (77%) of our survey respondents said their organisations were expecting to increase investment in technology in 2019, with a further 11% saying investment totals would stay consistent with last year.
But it isn’t just African enterprises planning to pour more money into technology. The continent is increasingly attracting the attention of venture capitalists and private investment funds from around the world, while several countries are enjoying a rapid rise in tech-based start-up activity.
In 2018, the number of funding deals for African start-ups more than doubled and the total invested increased more than four-fold - $725.6 million across 458 deals. The trend is for bigger deals, with 30 startups raising in excess of $5 million in individual funding rounds.
As you might expect, start-up activity is focused in the continent’s biggest and most technologically advanced economies. Nigeria and South Africa boast more than 50 start-up hubs and tech incubators between them, followed by Egypt (34), Kenya (30), Morocco (25) and Ghana (24).
In terms of where all of this investment is going, the consensus amongst our survey respondents was fairly convincing. As discussed, FinTech and mobile money stand out as major commercial opportunities across African markets, and 35% of our participants expect these segments to attract the most investment.
In 2018, FinTech accounted for 40% of total start-up funding and was also responsible for half of the 10 biggest deals.
Our survey found nearly a third of industry figures (30%) believe the continent’s next tech unicorn - a start-up that grows to be worth in excess of $1bn - will come from FinTech.
According to our survey, IoT (17%) and agriculture (13%) are the other key African sectors likely to attract high levels of investment in the next 12 months.
Interestingly, in 2018, neither of these featured in the top three sectors in terms of the value of tech investment funding they attracted, with ‘Cleantech’ ($143.5m) and e-commerce ($97.7m) following FinTech.
