Although trends really have nothing to do with the growth of industry, we think they are essential to cultivating knowledge of a particular set.
In 2022, we saw trends that were good and bad, the toxic one being the shutting down of startups and downscaling of employees: which apparently has carried forward to 2023.
In 2023, the bubbles have started to erupt, clearly forming. We need not to fasten our belts and instead decide to march forward together with the rest of the startup world.
Here are some of the sectors we think might take a book in Africa if well taken care of :
Fintech’s blitz-scaling while patching
Although in 2022 fintech suffered a major drop in funding having $161 million raised in Q3 2022, we are looking to the scaling of the fintech probably venturing into the web3 era, creating competition or enhancing the war against the banks in Africa.
Africa has more than 14 startups in the blockchain space, all of them brute-forcing a way into making consumers adopt the new form of currency.
The potential of Fintech lies not only in what is to come but also in the existing markets like BNPL, Lending, Neo-Banking e.t.c
Although this is a tough genre, founders really have to put in the most.
Collaborative ecosystem to ship globally
As said in my previous article, Africa is one disconnected family, According to Techcabal “Globally, nuances in different markets spell out the opportunity for success or failure for startups. Product owners agree that cultural subtleties and regulatory patterns are crucial to the wide-scale uptake of products, especially in new markets. Granted, these differences can affect operations from country to country, but in Africa, issues with interoperability take a center stage, to the detriment of key sectors in the continent’s economy.”
Africa needs patching at all levels, honestly. As of 2022, Africa had no unicorn, this being attributed to the lack of investment from top leading venture capital firms such as Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and SoftBank. In 2022, we had hoped that Wasoko could join the unicorn wave.
This is picking a trend from the beneficiaries of the named VCs.
Try to avoid the AI ship
This is nearly not expected as AI trends are clearly picking up, and everywhere is regenerating data. Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole AI thing, but this is coming from a place where in 2022, crypto startups popped up and decided to say they are the thing, but by late 2022, nothing happened.
I say this because the field is growing, only a few can pull up the strands and do the Boston Dynamics kind of startups in Africa. We need to focus on how to enhance what we have compared to every year, finding ways to make fast cash. Yes, I said it.
In Conclusion
I know most are disappointed by the time they skimmed this article, But what would be the benefit of us telling you to go the e-commerce way since it’s the trend as of January, only hype, and later your startup fails? You need to understand there are factors and trends are not factors.
It’s high time to avoid the narrative of startups paying writers to place them on an article ‘ 2023 startups to watch ‘ only for them to fade in the abyss.
Africa should be Visa-Free on startups, We cannot even ship Chipper cash a unicorn into Kenya, really? Forget the trend let’s focus big.
