Afridigest Fintech Review: March recap

Afridigest is your intelligent guide to tech in Africa. The Fintech Review is a (usually) weekly recap of what matters in African fintech.

📌 Hello, friends. Sorry for the wait. It’s been a while since the last Afridigest Fintech Review — I was dealing with a health scare & was hospitalized for a bit unfortunately. The good news is we’re back in action and firing on all cylinders again. Thanks for continuing to read Afridigest and many thanks to those who checked in 🙏🏽 Today’s Fintech Review covers the entire month of March. And the next two Fintech Reviews will cover the months of April & May, then we’ll be back to the regular coverage.

On to the month’s highlights:

• Thirteen debt & equity fintech financing transactions were announced totaling $150M+, plus four M&A deals

• News of the month: On a USD basis, Nigerian payments unicorn Interswitch generated just $42M in revenues and $3.5M in profits last year. Airtel Money executives are again talking about an IPO for the mobile money unit — at an expected valuation of ~$4B. And in other mobile money news, despite the popularity of M-Pesa in East Africa, West Africa continues to lead the continent’s mobile money growth story.

• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Moove, Planet42, MNT-Halan, Payspace, Interswitch, Leatherback, Onafriq, Lemfi, Fawry, PremierCredit, Gluwa, Verto, Union54, Zeeh Africa, Octamile, Chipper Cash, Kuda, Eyowo, Zone, & others.

• Executives appearing: MNT Halan’s Mounir Nakhla, Verto’s Ola Oyetayo, Piggyvest’s Odun Eweniyi, Visa’s Eva Ngigi, Jumo’s Joe Mucheru, Paylican’s Yan Gascon, DFS Lab’s Stephen Deng, Binance South Africa’s Hannes Wessels, Mojaloop Foundation’s Paula Hunter, Itemate Solutions’ Robert van Breukelen, Mukuru’s Andy Jury, The Information’s Abubakar Idris, and others.

With that said, let’s get into it!

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March 1-31, 2024

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