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The 2021 Global Fintech Ranking indicated a fall in Nigeria’s Rank to 57th from 52nd despite its “highest number of fintech startups in Africa” status.
Findexable, a platform that uses real-time mapping and indexation technology to examine and provide the latest insights on trends in private fintech firms worldwide; provided the global fintech ranking report.
The ranking index, first published in 2019, incorporates data from Findexable’s records to compare and rank the fintech ecosystem of about 264 cities (including 50 cities added this year) across 83 countries with the help of its Global Partnership Network, including Crunchbase, StartupBlink, SEMrush and 60+ fintech associations globally.
With The United States and the United Kingdom pulling ahead of the pack in country rankings globally, certain countries like Israel in the Middle East region display the expansion of the fintech ecosystem as it made its way to the top 5 globally.
Africa as a whole, is not excluded from the increase in the fintech sector. Of all the 20 countries added this year to the fintech index, the region had an additional 7 of its countries make it to the global fintech ranking this year, making it 13 African countries in total on the list. The new countries added include Seychelles, Rwanda, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Somalia and Cameroon. This expansion across the continent shows that it is one of the steadily rising fintech regions in the world.
Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, produced the first Unicorn fintech in Africa (Interswitch) and has the highest number of unicorn fintech startups in the continent, including the recently added Flutterwave and Chippercash; however, it ranked third in Africa.
Kenya, home to prominent fintech startups like Abacus and M-Pesa, took the lead and rose by 11 spots to 31st globally, and South Africa fell by two places to 44th globally on the index. Seychelles (59th) and Rwanda (61st) were also ranked among Africa’s top 5 fintech ecosystems after Nigeria.
Nairobi in Kenya also took the lead in terms of cities rankings in Africa as it rose to 37th from 63rd globally, thus becoming the only African city among the top 50 cities worldwide. Meanwhile, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial centre, dropped to 93rd globally in fintech rankings and Africa’s second, falling 56 places behind Kenya. Other countries among the top 5 cities in Africa include South Africa’s Cape Town (97th), Johannesburg (99th) and Cairo (117th).
The Fintech report also stated that the pandemic in 2020 affected the acquisition of capital by venture capitalists and private equity funds, which led to a general drop in capital raised compared to previous years.
However, the beginning of 2021 faced a surge in the financial technology sector as the demand for digital finance grew globally. A survey conducted by CB Insight shows that the number of fintech unicorns grew to 108 in 2021 from 61 in April 2020, with a combined value of over $440 billion. (More than double of its previous value)
Nigeria in focus
GDP: $432.294 billion in 2020 compared to $448.12 billion in 2019
Population: 206,139,587 in 2020 compared to 200,963,03 in 2019
GDP per capita: $2,097 in 2020 compared to $2,229 in 2019
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