As startup investors who specialize in upside potential, we identify high-potential ventures and turn them into tech sector leaders. We choose asset-light companies deploying technology at an early stage in their journey. While still undervalued, they are solving big problems for a lot of people – in other words, they are creating markets with significant growth prospects. To secure returns, we manage risks by deploying Nobel-prize winning strategies, offering uncorrelated assets in a diversified portfolio.
This combination of high-potential startups, nascent markets, and risk amelioration appeals to investors and is ubiquitous in our focus region, Africa! After all, can you think of a continent where people have bigger problems, yet commercial solutions are less deployed or funded?
Fintech Growth
While Africa’s diverse tech ecosystem has seen extraordinary growth in recent years, the rise of its fintech sector is particularly compelling. Financial services sit at the centre of economic life, yet, across much of the continent, they were unavailable until cellular infrastructure (Celtel) and innovations created frictionless delivery. This bridging of needs and services is precisely what creates outsized opportunities for investors.
The scale of unmet demand from both developing and mature markets is difficult to overstate. Historically, Africa’s financial systems have been built around legacy banks that primarily served large corporations and high-net worth individuals. Many of these institutions were highly profitable and attracted acquisition interest from global players such as ICBC, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Credit Suisse, and Standard Chartered.
Given this degree of profitability, they neglected the majority of the population in the informal economy. Even in the present day, around 400 million Africans, approximately 57% of the continent’s adult population, remain unbanked. However, this exclusion is now being reversed by local fintech entrepreneurs. Across the continent, startups are building low-cost, mobile-first financial infrastructure that leapfrogs traditional banking models.
Scale and Opportunity
Remittance levels illustrate the magnitude of opportunity for investors. In 2023 the United Nations reported formal remittances delivered $100 billion into Africa, equaling nearly 6 per cent of the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP, exceeding all Official Development Assistance ($42 billion) and Foreign Direct Investments ($48 billion) combined. These capital flows represent not only the depth of the African diaspora’s filial commitments but also their confidence in its economic development, sending two vital signals to foreign investors.
Given the size of fintech opportunities, it is unsurprising that the sector has dominated venture investment on the continent. In 2024, African fintech companies attracted approximately $1.4bn in equity funding, representing around 60% of formal startup equity investment across Africa, a 59% year-on-year increase. McKinsey projects that African fintech revenues could reach $47bn annually by 2028, nearly five times their 2023 levels, underlining the potential scale.
Of the roughly 10 startup unicorns Africa has produced, eight are fintech companies — four of which LoftyInc Capital invested in pre-Series A. The fact fintech accounts for this share of the continent’s unicorns is a reflection of the sector’s outsized role in solving some of the continent’s most pressing economic challenges.
Nigeria, in particular, stands out as the most compelling single market opportunity within this broader ecosystem. With a population approaching 240 million people, comparable to the United States’ population trajectory in the late 20th century, it combines demographic scale with acute financial infrastructure gaps. It is also the continent’s most concentrated hub of fintech innovation: Nigerian startups account for a large share of Africa’s unicorns and high-growth fintech success stories.
Nigeria’s Fintech Unicorns
The emergence of companies such as Paystack and Flutterwave helped define global perceptions of African fintech. Paystack, backed early by Y Combinator, was acquired by Stripe in 2020 for $200m just four years after launch, an outcome that delivered exceptional returns for early investors.
Flutterwave reached unicorn status in 2021 following a $170m Series C round and now supports hundreds of thousands of businesses across more than 150 payment channels, including cards, bank transfers, and mobile wallets. These are not isolated success stories, but signals of a broader fintech ecosystem capable of producing globally competitive infrastructure companies.
This momentum is continuing. Nigerian-founded remittance fintech, LemFi, raised $53m in Series B funding in early 2025, reflecting sustained investor appetite in cross-border payments and diaspora-focused financial services.
Nigeria: Africa’s Fintech Hub
The broader funding environment reinforces Nigeria’s importance to the African tech and fintech ecosystem. Nigerian startups raised approximately $5.07 billion in venture funding between 2019 and 2025, making it Africa’s largest startup funding destination over that period.
Global investors are increasingly waking up to the huge opportunities now available in Africa and its key tech hubs, such as Nigeria. This opportunity has been steadily growing since the 2008 financial crisis, when a wave of African diaspora professionals began returning home. This influx of talent helped catalyse the fintech ecosystem we see today, which blends founders’ global technical expertise with a deep understanding of local market and consumer needs.
I have often said, “If necessity is the mother of innovation, then Africans are her children – and such children she has raised!” For investors, the takeaway is straightforward: Africa’s combination of deep structural need, demographic scale, and increasingly mature infrastructure is creating one of the most compelling fintech opportunities globally, with Nigeria firmly at its center.
Marsha Wulff is the co-founder of LoftyInc Capital and author of African Ngenuity.
