- Moniepoint recently joined the list of African startups with unicorn status
- The league is made up of eight startups with at least a $1 billion valuation
- From the pioneering startup Interswitch to the newest entrant, Moniepoint, TheRadar spotlights these unicorns
Nigeria-based fintech Moniepoint recently raised $110 million in equity financing to become Africa’s eighth startup to achieve unicorn status, joining the likes of Interswitch, Opay, Flutterwave, Wave, Andela, Chipper Cash, and MNT-Halan.
Unicorn as a term was coined in 2013 by Aileen Lee, the founder and Managing Partner of Palo Alto’s Cowboy Ventures, to describe American software companies that were less than 10 years old and valued at $1 billion or more by private investors or public markets.
However, the term has widely come to be accepted and used by global venture capital and the tech community to mean any privately held tech startup with a $1 billion valuation, irrespective of its founding date, sector of operation, or regional focus.
To achieve a unicorn status, therefore, a startup must be at least worth $1 billion.
With the recent addition of Moniepoint to Africa’s unicorn league, TheRadar spotlights the eight unicorns in Africa.
8 startups with unicorn status in Africa
1. Interswitch
The pioneer startup in the league of unicorns in Africa is Interswitch. Since its emergence in 2002, Interswitch has been blazing the trail in the fintech space, pioneering the revolution and innovation in that space.
The transaction-switching platform attained unicorn status in 2019 after a round led by Visa.
Interswitch offers a variety of digital payment and commerce solutions, including online payment gateways, interbank transaction switching and third-party card processing, card acquiring and issuance via domestic card scheme, Verve, identity management and digital payment infrastructure for state governments, point-of-sale solutions, among others.
In March 2023, the fintech processed 1.2 billion transactions, which was the highest it processed in a single month in the country. The increase in transactions was due to the Federal Government’s naira redesign policy.
2. Flutterwave
On March 10, 2021, five years after its founding, Flutterwave joined the unicorn league after raising $170 million in Series C funding. The funding round was led by New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital and US hedge fund and investment firm Tiger Global.
Among the new and existing investors that participated in the round were DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, and WorldpayFIS 9yards Capital.
With its then status, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola said the company was considering either listing on the New York Stock Exchange or performing a dual listing in the US and Nigeria.
Flutterwave is an API-driven platform that aggregates payment gateways across the continent, allowing merchants to accept card and alternative payments (mobile money and bank transfers) easily.
It initially focused on global enterprise customers like helping Uber easily accept payments across various African markets, but diversified to offer a full range of products to a wide variety of customer groups with solutions like the Flutterwave Store, Flutterwave Capital and creator economy platform, Disha, among others.
3. Chipper Cash
Chipper Cash attained unicorn status in May 2021 after a Series C round that saw it raise $100 million, propelling its valuation to $1.25 billion at the time.
The funding round was led by SVB Capital, the investment arm of Silicon Valley Bank. Other investors who participated in the round were Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures, 500 Startups, Tribe Capital, and Brue2 Ventures.
The fintech startup facilitates cross-border payment across Africa and was founded in 2018 by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled.
Chipper Cash offers mobile-based, no-fee, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services, bill payments, airtime top-up services, virtual cards, stock marketing investing, and crypto trading, among other services, in seven African countries: Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya. It has also expanded to the United Kingdom market.
4. Opay
Opay joined Africa’s unicorn league on August 23, 2021, after it raised an outstanding $400 million in a funding round led by Softbank, a Japanese venture company. The round was also supported by China’s Sequoia Capital, the venture arm of Chinese food delivery company Dragonball Capital, Redpoint China, Sourcecode Capital, Softbank Ventures Asia and 3W Capital.
Opay was co-founded in late 2017 by Opera and Balder Investment, an entity controlled by Chinese billionaire and Opera Chairman and CEO Yahui Zhou.
The mobile payments platform began operations in Nigeria in 2018 and was initially focused on its motorcycle taxi ride-hailing service ORide. It, however, veered into payments after a legislative restriction on commercial motorbike taxis.
In addition to payment and money transfer services, OPay offers airtime top-ups, loans, savings, and more. As of April 2024, it offers services to 50 million users and one million merchants with a monthly transaction volume of over $12 billion.
5. Wave
The Senegalese fintech is the first unicorn from francophone Africa. In its Series A funding round, Wave raised $200 million from investors led by Stripe, Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital in September 2021. Wave was also the first startup operating in Africa to have raised up to $200 million in a Series A, which shot its valuation to $1.7 billion at the time.
It was piloted in 2016 and fully launched in 2017 as a spinoff from Sendwave, an Asia and Africa-focused remittance company. It offers a range of free or low-cost financial services, including money transfers, bill payments, and airtime top-ups.
Wave has dominated Senegal, its first market, driving telcos out of business to become the country’s largest mobile money provider, as the majority of Senegal’s adult population uses Wave every month.
6. Andela
Seven years after it was founded, Andela raised $200 million from investors in September 2021 to become one of Africa’s unicorns. The funding increased the company’s valuation to $1.5 billion at the time.
The 2021 round of fundraising was led by SoftBank Group Corp., a Japanese tech investor, with participation from new investor Whale Rock and existing investors, including Generation Investment Management, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Spark Capital.
Founded in 2014, the New York-based startup is a Nigerian startup that connects African software engineering talent to global companies.
It started as a remote-engineering-as-a-service platform, training and hiring junior software developers across Africa and then placing them with global businesses as full-time distributed engineers. It has since grown to become a talent marketplace for tech talents with or without prior Andela training or relationships.
7. MNT-Halan
MNT-Halan is Egypt’s first startup to achieve unicorn status after it raised $400 million in February 2023. The investment includes $260 million in equity financing and $140 million in securitised bond issuances.
During the funding round, Chimera Investments sunk $200 million in the company, giving it a 20 per cent stake in MNT-Halan.
The company carried out the securitisation through its subsidiaries, Tasaheel Microfinance Company (Tasaheel) and Halan Consumer Finance (Halan). While Tasaheel securitised $100 million of its loan book, Halan securitised $40 million of its loan book. According to the company, the deals were oversubscribed.
MNT-Halan provides financial services and an e-commerce platform for unbanked customers in North Africa, including loans and digital payments.
It was founded in 2021 as a result of a share swap merger between ride-hailing and delivery platform Halan and microlending holding company MNT, both founded by Egyptian serial entrepreneur Mounir Nakhlar.
Most of MNT-Halan’s revenue comes from lending, as it has since shut down its ride-hailing operations.
The startup has been making waves, securing $157.5 million in a funding round 17 months after it became a unicorn to drive its expansion.
8. Moniepoint
The newest entrant to Africa’s unicorn league is Moniepoint. The Nigerian fintech raised $100 million in a Series C financing round on October 29, 2024. The round was led by Development Partners International (DPI) and other new investors, including Google’s Africa Investment Fund and Verod Capital. Global impact firm Lightrock, an existing investor, also participated in the funding round.
The new funding has further boosted the fintech’s valuation to at least $1 billion, increasing from around $400 million in a 2022 funding round where it raised $50 million. Per Financial Times, Moniepoint previously raised $55 million from investors.
7 African AI startups founded by Nigerians
Meanwhile, TheRadar reported that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution has brought about innovations and startups leveraging technology to address pressing human needs.
The African continent is not left behind in this wave of revolution. The continent boasts a handful of startups changing the world, most of which are founded by Nigerians or located in Nigeria, including these seven.
