Nigerian Players In The Rising Sectors Of African Tech Ecosystem

The tech Ecosystem in Africa is mainly dominated by fintech.  This is not a surprise since the sector also dominated last year’s total funding from Africa. In all, fintech accounted for 63% or $3 billion of the entire funding received last year. In that same year, African startups raised $5.2 billion (per Partech data).

However, there are other sectors on the continent getting significant attention. This is evident in how startups in the sectors are raising funding. Nigeria is blessed to have startups playing in all sectors. While actively competing with others in the African tech Ecosystem. Most of them have raised funding while others are in the process. Here are the sectors and Nigerian startups to watch.

Artificial Intelligence 

Nigeria is an important regional player in Africa. It accounts for about half of West Africa’s population, at 202 million people. Again, it has one of the largest youth populations of 43% in the world. Despite being disadvantaged in terms of limited access to AI training and infrastructure, Nigerian youths have managed to still drive AI activities. Nigeria is home to several AI-driven startups competing for a space in Africa and the global world. Some of them include Reliance HMO(cloud-based insurance health platform), Reliance Health (online health insurance solution), Indicina(loan life cycle management platform), Edves (integrated management for schools), and Octamile(AI-based insurance claim management solutions for insurance & other businesses) etc.

Edtech

Recall that the covid-19 pandemic of 2020 disrupted many activities in the whole world. And the education sector was not spared.

Cleantech

Seventy-five per cent of the world’s population has limited or no access to electricity. While Nigeria’s electricity grid has 12 GW of installed capacity. Only about a quarter of it is available to consumers. Though there is the option of self-generation through fossil fuel generators which is about 15GW. Its emission causes harm to both humans and the environment. However, with the renewable energy sources available in Africa, one would think that energy will cease to be a problem.

Agrictech

Africa has constantly battled food scarcity. Yet in the last 10 years, Africa is still facing its worst food crisis. It has been so horrible that 27 million Africans in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are experiencing extreme hunger. Again, 11 million more are being projected to join them in 3 months if care is not taken. Overall, conditions such as the high cost of food, recurring droughts, conflicts on the continent, and the Ukraine-Russia war is further increasing this problem. More is expected from African agritech companies to solve this problem. And as usual, Nigerian Agritech startups are playing in this market. They include Thrive Agric, Farmcrowdy, Groupfarma, Farmsponsor, FarmKart, Ezfarming, Payfarmer etc.