In the African tech innovation bubble, fintech is the most illustrious sector of all time. The dash to digitize financial services has wooed investors into a value pool wherein the continent’s first and largest sets of unicorns and exits were baptized.
Of the USD 4.08 B African startups racked up last year, fintechs pulled in USD 2.31 B—nearly half the cumulative VC fundraising. However, the wave has, so far, been isolated to the businesses-to-consumer scene, where numerous ventures attempt to energize the region’s financial inclusion crusade.
The business-to-business locus has, for long, evaded the much-needed storm, despite being an indispensable aspect of financial services. According to the World Bank, B2B payments in Sub-Saharan Africa is a USD 1.5 T opportunity, yet the market is laden with manual and unnerving cumbersome processes. Yet, the region’s B2B fintech drive, fraught with a plethora of drawbacks, is largely manual and underserved.
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