SA国际传媒

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is also one of the region鈥檚 fastest-growing hubs for venture funding. And while rounds rarely match the supergiant sizes we often see in U.S. and Europe, they鈥檙e steadily getting bigger.

Today was a case in point as , a Lagos- and Austin-based digital health care provider, announced a $40 million Series B funding round led by . The company began operations in Nigeria seven years go as a telemedicine startup and later expanded into a single-fee health care provider.

Reliance鈥檚 Series B was the largest venture round for a Nigerian startup so far this year, per SA国际传媒 data. It鈥檚 also the first African technology investment for General Atlantic, a New York-headquartered growth equity investor. Given that the firm has $86 billion under management, that鈥檚 a bullish sign that deep-pocketed investors are taking interest in the region.

In recent years, venture investment to Nigeria has mostly been trending upward. Using SA国际传媒 data, we looked at total reported seed and venture investment over the past four years:

2022 YTD: A total of $89 million聽has gone into about a dozen reported rounds.

2021: A record $1.2 billion went to over 2oo financings, topped by payments app .

2020: Funding slowed some with $189 million in reported venture investment.

2019: Investors put $576 million to work, a majority going to two fintechs: and OPay.

2018: Reported investment totaled $218 million, led by now-public online retailer .

Notably, sizable rounds to Nigeria-based companies tend to skew early-stage. That means there鈥檚 plenty of room for growth ahead鈥攁nd even bigger nationwide annual funding totals鈥攁s the most successful early-stage players scale up their game.

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