March 29, 2024

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Africatech: first class of 40 african startups unveiled

Paris, 11 April 2023 – African Unicorns announces the 40 African startups selected for this first edition. Among them,8 will receive,in Casablanca on 27 April 2023, a trophy designating them as potential future leaders of African tech.

In 2016, Africa saw the birth of its first unicorn. Today, the continent has nearly a dozen. The African continent has seen the structuring of a real ecosystem of startups whose number has tripled in recent years and will continue to grow. Africa Tech is becoming more than ever the bearer of many opportunities across the continent.

Despite the fact that African Tech is still largely dominated by English-speaking Africa, with Nigeria remaining the top destination for investors, followed by South Africa, Egypt and Kenya, French-speaking Africa is becoming increasingly attractive with Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal.

Created at the initiative of Mehdi El Alj, African Unicorns identifies and promotes the exceptional successes of African creators-entrepreneurs in the field of technology in order to connect technology giants and investors with startups to encourage acceleration of the sector and to facilitate collaborations.

Africa Unicorns unveils the 40 African startups selected for this year’s inaugural African Unicorns. The 40 startups featured were identified in partnership with BCG X, the tech build and design unit of BCG. The selection was based on economic performance criteria such as fundraising, revenue growth and the level of traction they deliver in their market. For this first edition, Africa Unicorns will award 8 trophies in 7 categories, including the ESG trophy.

With their disruptive innovations and their ambition, the African start-ups selected evolve in various fields such as biotech, medtech, e-commerce, fintech, Greentech, energy, mobility, AI or big data. They come from different African countries such as Morocco, Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Togo, Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

In partnership with Orange, BCG X, AfricInvest, CGEM and Royal Air Maroc, Africa Unicorns announces that the startups selected for each sector are:

  • In  the  BioTech and MedTech category:  54gene;  Biotessia;  Carepoint  (Africa  Health Holding); LifeQ; mPharma and Yodawy.
  • In the E-commerce&Servicescategory: DabaDoc; MaxAB; TradeDepot; Trella; Wasoko (Sokowatch) and Yassir.
  • In the Fintech&InsurTechcategory: Asante Financial Services Group; FairMoney; Jumo; MFS Africa; M-Kopa; Moove Africa and PalmPay.
  • In the GreenTech&Energycategory: Bboxx, Cloudfret, Daystar Power, Nithio; Solarise Africa and Zola Electric.
  • In  the  Mobility Logistics category:  Ampersand;  Gozem;  Kobo360;  Max;  Chari.ma, Planet42 and Sabi.
  • In the SAAS,AI,BigDatacategory: Inyad, Gro Intelligence, Instabug, InstaDeep, Jambo (Financial Software), Ramani and RapidDeploy.

The selection of these start-ups reflects the commitment of African Unicorns and its partners to highlight Africa’s most promising companies while providing to the selected start-ups a platform to connect with investors and business partners to support their scale-up.

For Mehdi El Alj, founder of African Unicorns: “For the past few years, African start-ups have been investing in new fields of activity and deploying real disruptive innovations that provide an important competitive advantage in the African countries where they operate. Game changers in technological, industrial, medical and energy sovereignty, these start-ups will enable Africans to meet the challenges they face. We must support this enthusiasm and encourage the growth of a virtuous ecosystem around AfricaTech.”

Africa is now the home of nearly a dozen unicorns, thanks to the emergence of a thriving ecosystem of startups that have tripled in number in a few years. Although African tech is dominated by English-speaking countries, several African countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal are also becoming attractive territories for investors.

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