East African Fintechs Become Profitable, Not Unicorns (MB#3)

Africa has 9 unicorns today. 8 of them are fintechs. And none of them come from the continent’s most VC-funded country: Kenya; the face of East Africa’s startup scene, which raised about $638 million in 2024 ( ~ 29% of all funding in Africa).

Meanwhile, Nigeria, which raised about $410 million in 2024 (~ 18% of Africa’s total funding) has produced at least four unicorns alone, latest one being Moniepoint which just a few years ago, was trying to raise $10 Million, and some $100 Million size investors rejected them because the founder didn’t have a Stanford-type background. Fast-forward to today, Moniepoint is valued at over $1 Billion, and that $10 Million cheque would now be worth more than entire funds that once rejected it.

If anything, West Africa seems to create unicorns regardless.

So the question remains:

Why doesn’t the most VC-funded African country have a unicorn?

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Is it because M-Pesa, which processes payments worth 50–60% of Kenya’s $124.5 billion GDP, absorbed most of the market opportunity that could have grown other startups to unicorn scale?

Is it a scalability ceiling?

Is it market structure?

Is it founder capacity?

We’re all still trying to answer that.

The Next Pattern

Here is an emerging pattern worth paying attention to:

East Africa may not produce unicorns but it produces profitability.

A few examples:

• Nala, Tanzania based consumer remittances + B2B payments became profitable in 2024

• M-KOPA, Kenya based asset-financing fintech became profitable in 2025

• Umba, Kenya based neobank became profitable in 2025

Together they have raised more than $500 Million, and guess what they achieved first? Profitability, not unicorn status .

That’s becoming a theme.

Profitability over Unicorn Status: The East African Model?

This raises a few questions for VCs:

• Do you actually need more capital to hit profitability?

• Should the most VC-funded region be judged by unicorn count or profitability outcomes?

• And if these companies are now profitable, should we expect them to chase unicorn status next?

Which brings us back to Nigeria — the outlier.

So what does Nigeria have that Kenya doesn’t?

A few obvious structural advantages:

• A 200 Million population

• Higher velocity of fintech adoption

• A culture of building for massive scale early

• And perhaps a more aggressive founder archetype

But here’s a thought:

Maybe the East African path to unicorn status is different.

Maybe you get profitable in East Africa, then go chase scale ~ the Unicorn title in West Africa, where the population (and upside) is significantly larger.

The challenge?

We still don’t have strong examples of East African startups expanding into West Africa (or vice versa) and winning big.

But maybe it’s time for the first one.