African crypto funding since Q1 2020
Q3 2022 saw almost the same amount of funding as the whole of 2021!
Hello crypto friends! 👋
Welcome to Emerging Onchain’s first data deep dive!
While 2022 marked the end of the crypto bull market (& FTX ☠️), for the African crypto scene, it was the biggest year yet! 2022 saw over $155million raised by African crypto startups (almost double the $86million raised in 2021).
In 2022 VALR ($50m Series B), Nestcoin ($6.45m Seed), Jambo ($37.5m Seed & Series A), Afriex ($10m Series A), Mara ($23m Seed), CASSAVA ($8m), Yellowcard ($40m Series B) and Ejara ($8m Series A) were amongst the companies that raised over $5m.
With the West (aka the US gov 👀) suddenly becoming a somewhat unfriendly environment for crypto firms, we are seeing accelerated interest in Africa from Western crypto firms. So the question, is what does this mean for African crypto funding? Will 2023 at least outpace 2021?
This data is pulled from the Emerging Onchain deal database, which lists 140+ fundraising rounds, the amount raised by different African startups, when and from which VCs. All the data has been manually curated from public announcements and from information shared with me by VCs.