According to the report “Debt Financing in Africa’s Innovative Ecosystem,” between 2014 and 2023, African startups as a whole borrowed a total of $2.1 billion.
“While debt is certainly playing a role in Africa’s startup ecosystem and innovations on the financing side making it more accessible, one of the biggest drivers of debt’s rise in Africa’s startup ecosystems may be the dramatic fall in equity funding, which fell from $2.6bn in 2022 to $1.4bn in 2023,2 the report said.
The report added that, “Over the past ten years, more than $2bn in disclosed debt funding has been raised by digital, technology-enabled, and green companies in Africa from more than 140 funders for a total of more than 200 deals,”
Kenyan startups received the lion’s share of this debt, having borrowed over $800 million in 60 transactions. READ MORE
