Afridigest Fintech Review: Africa's hidden unicorns
Week 33 2023: Aug 13-19
Afridigest is your intelligent guide to Africa’s tech ecosystem. The Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what matters in African fintech.
Sorry for the mix-up, friends — I mistakenly sent out a draft version ~30 minutes ago, but this is the certified correct version.
On to the week’s fintech highlights:
• One fintech-related fundraise was announced this week.
• News of the week: M-Pesa officially went live in Ethiopia. Mastercard is planning to acquire a minority stake in MTN's fintech business. And MTN is open to selling up to 30% of the unit in total.
• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Ed Partners Africa, Ukheshe, enza group, Moniepoint, Lula, Goldfinch, Patricia, & more.
• Executives appearing: MTN’s Ralph Mupita, WeCashUp’s Cedric Atangana, Honeycoin’s David Nandwa, Koree’s Magalie Gauze-Sanga, Norrsken22’s Ngetha Waithaka, & more.
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Week 33 2023: Aug 13-19
📰 Thoughts of the WeekTwo years after investing $100M in Airtel’s mobile money business at a $2.65B valuation, Mastercard is in the process of buying a minority stake in MTN’s fintech/mobile money unit that sees the unit valued at $5.2B.
It’s a good reminder of something I wrote about a couple of years ago in this Aug 2021 piece.
Africa has a number of well-known tech unicorns, but there are some “hidden unicorns” too: telco mobile money platforms.
MTN and Airtel’s mobile money units have now been publicly valued by outside investors.
And this raises the question: what might Orange Money Africa and M-Pesa be valued at today?
(For context, MTN’s fintech unit is being valued at ~16x EBITDA and ~5x revenue.)
What do you think? 🤔
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