Afridigest Executive Brief: Foreign funds find footholds

Strategic Intelligence for Senior Executives | Week 39: Sep 21-27, 2025

Sep 29, 2025

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The Afridigest Executive Brief delivers essential intelligence to busy executives.

A summary of this week’s key developments:

• Canal+ completes MultiChoice acquisition, consolidating African media under French control; in other news, new data shows ~85% of funding to African startups comes from foreign LPs

• Mastercard invests in Smile ID to scale digital identity verification across Africa as the continent’s digital economy blooms

• Climate capital mobilizes at scale — from Catalyst Fund’s $10M disclosure to Acumen’s ~$250M commitment

Deal of the Week

🌍 Smile ID, a pan-African digital KYC and identity verification platform, secured a minority investment from Mastercard as part of an extended commercial partnership. The investment amount wasn’t disclosed.

About Smile ID: Founded in 2017, Smile ID provides identity verification, data & document verification, and fraud detection solutions across Africa. The platform enables banks, fintechs, mobile money operators, and other enterprises to onboard new customers faster while reducing identity fraud.

Smile ID is backed by Costanoa Ventures, Future Africa, PTB Ventures, Khosla Impact, 500 Startups, CRE Venture Capital, among other investors. It has performed over 250 million KYC checks to date and its client base includes Flutterwave, Uber, Binance, OPay, Paystack, and Zenith Bank.

Key personalities:

Mark Straub, Co-Founder & CEO, Smile ID
Dustin Strydom, VP, Commercial, Smile ID
Selin Bahadirli, Executive Vice President, Services, Mastercard EEMEA
Dennis Gamiello, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Identity, Mastercard

In the Founder’s words: “The surge in synthetic identity fraud in Africa is costing banks and lenders hundreds of millions of dollars a year. By joining forces with Mastercard we can help turn the tide. As we combine insights and technologies, we can expand opportunities for consumers by giving banks and mobile wallets the confidence to onboard the next 300 million African users securely.” — Mark Straub

In the Investor’s words: “As fragmented identity systems slow down businesses and lock millions out of the digital economy, Smile ID’s innovative identity platform complements Mastercard’s commitment to fostering secure and inclusive digital ecosystems.” — Selin Bahadirli

Go deeper: As mentioned in last week’s Executive Brief, “if Africa’s digital economy is a gold rush, digital identity is among the picks and shovels.” Digital ID solutions are critical enablers of Africa’s digital economy, which is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030.

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