The rest of Africa's funded startups: where they are now
Wave, the purest case of selling for less than customers already pay
Every startup based outside Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa, or with its main market there, that raised a single round of — or more in —. Those years are when the money came in, not when companies failed: outcomes are followed up to —. The pool is small because most African countries had no round this large at all: — companies across — countries. Of the — that sell something cheaper than what their customers already pay, — are still operating, and they include the biggest success in the pool, Wave. Price takers: —. Companies with published profits: —.
Outcome by sector
Payments, lending and energy hold up; the one failure was a payments company that never earned revenue. Each chip is one company; failures are in red. Hover a chip for what happened.
The purest poverty premium in the whole study
Wave is the clearest case of the thesis anywhere in the five samples. Mobile money in Senegal already existed, run by the dominant telecom operator, and poor customers paid heavily to send and withdraw money. Wave made deposits and withdrawals free and charged a flat 1% to send, so customers kept doing exactly what they already did, for much less. It took most of the market within a few years. Unlike the distribution startups that undercut informal traders, Wave undercut a formal incumbent with high fees, which left it room for a margin. The two other companies here that remove a premium follow the Kenyan pattern: Nuru sells solar power to businesses and homes that otherwise run diesel generators, and Tugende lets motorcycle-taxi riders buy instead of renting by the day. The one failure, Dash, had no revenue at all and collapsed over governance, not over its market.
Who makes money and who loses it, by sector
Profitable means a publicly reported profit with figures, from a company that is otherwise healthy; none here qualifies. Operating means still running, with no published profit. Each chip is one company.
Winning and losing sectors
Bars to the left are companies that failed or are distressed; bars to the right are still operating, with profitable ones in the accent color. Sectors are ordered from most net winners to most net losers. Hover a bar for names.
Every company by name
What the winners have that the losers don't
How many companies in each group have each trait. Darker cells mean more of the group has it.
The terms, in plain words.
- Spend displacement: the product costs less than what the same customers already pay for the same need, so they redirect money instead of finding new money. This is the poverty premium/penalty being removed. Here the clearest cases are Wave's 1% transfers instead of high mobile-money fees, solar instead of diesel generators, and owning a motorcycle instead of renting it daily.
- Price taker: a company with no pricing power, which has to accept the price that cheaper rivals, often informal traders, have already set.
- Essential need: demand that holds up when money is tight (food, energy, transport, health, moving money). Economists call it inelastic demand.
- Asset-heavy: high capital intensity; the company owns fleets, warehouses, labs, power plants or farms.
- Asset-backed debt: borrowing secured on the thing sold or on the stream of customer payments, through repossession rights, lockable devices, or a claim on the cars or solar panels being financed.
- Recurring payments: customers pay daily, weekly or monthly, or on every transaction, rather than once, which makes revenue predictable.
- Policy dependence: the business only works while a subsidy, licence, regulation or government approval is in place, or once one arrives.
Reading the map. With one failure in the pool, the map mostly shows what the survivors are made of: recurring payments, essential needs and, for the lenders, the vehicle or the loan as collateral. No company here is a price taker against informal traders. What the pool adds is a second way growth goes wrong: expanding abroad from a small home market. Yassir's French business was liquidated, as Swvl's foreign acquisitions were in Egypt, while the companies that stayed close to home kept growing. And the one outright failure, Dash, is a reminder that governance, not the market, sometimes decides the outcome.
Why they failed or stalled
Each company's main cause, and the event that finally tipped it over. The cause is what made the business fragile; the trigger is what ended it. The pool has one failure. It was not a price taker and did not misjudge its market; it never charged for its product, and its numbers turned out to be inflated.
Who is making money
Only healthy companies that have published profit figures. No company in this pool has. Wave is among Y Combinator's top-earning startups by revenue but does not publish profit, so it is counted as operating.
What the pool adds to the thesis.
- Undercutting a formal incumbent is different from undercutting informal traders. A telecom's high fees leave room for a margin when you cut them; an informal trader's low prices do not. Wave won the first fight; Twiga, Capiter and Alerzo lost the second.
- The Kenyan winners' model travels. Solar against diesel in Congo and own-the-motorcycle finance in Uganda are the same spend displacement and asset-backed lending that made money in Kenya.
- Small home markets push companies abroad too early. Yassir's French losses, like Swvl's foreign acquisitions, came from expanding before the home business was proven.
- Survival is not proof of return. No one here publishes a profit, and several companies have little public data.
All companies
Click a column to sort. The largest round is the biggest single round announced in the window.
Method and limits
Who is in. Startups headquartered outside Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa, or with their main market there, that announced one round of — or more (equity or debt) in —. The window covers when the money was raised; outcomes are followed to the present. It stops where it does so that every company has had at least three years to show how it turned out. Rounds and outcomes come from press reports, linked per company in the cards.
How each company is coded.
- Poverty premium/penalty: the extra that poor households and small businesses pay for the same thing, such as high mobile-money fees, diesel generators or daily motorcycle rental. C.K. Prahalad called it the poverty penalty. Yes when the product removes it, costing less than what the same customers already spend on the same need. Partial when it saves something real but sells at market price. No when it must match a price already set by low-cost informal operators. n/a when the customer is a business or a middle-class household, or the product replaces no existing spend.
- Asset intensity: High when the company owns power plants, pharmacies, fleets or warehouses; Medium when it carries inventory, vehicles or a loan book; Low when it is mostly software and people.
- Outcome: Operating (including Expensya, bought by Medius), Distressed (merged on weak terms, a deep down round, or collapsed in value), or Failed (shut, administration or liquidation), as of the date shown. A failed foreign subsidiary, such as Yassir France, does not change the parent's outcome.
- Profitable: published profit figures from a company that is otherwise healthy. A company's statement that it is profitable, without figures, is not enough.
Left out. InstaDeep (founded in Tunisia but headquartered in London, sold to BioNTech in 2023); Spiro (headquartered in Dubai, with markets across several countries); NALA (headquartered in the UK, serving the diaspora); Zipline (US); Bboxx (UK); Chari, Ampersand and Fido (their large rounds came after 2023); Zeepay and Easy Solar (no round of this size in the window could be confirmed).
Limits. The pool is very small and spread across many countries, so it adds cases rather than a pattern of its own. Several companies have little public data and are marked so. Tugende's round is a set of debt facilities announced together. The coding is my own judgment and is open to challenge row by row.
About this research. This study is my own independent work. I did it because billions have gone into African startups, and the record of what that money built is thin. Comments, corrections and conversations are welcome: Peter Muiga, pm@curatedventures.africa.
Curated Ventures is not a fund; it's where I publish my thinking as I move into venture investing. I am open to conversations about the research, and about working together.
Share your thoughts or reach me at pm@curatedventures.africa · Peter Muiga