After a record run, investor attention is shifting—and that says a lot about where blockchain is going in Africa.
Africa’s blockchain sector has hit a decline since its funding peak in 2022. Now, the industry is akin to a baby learning how to walk again, thanks to a myriad of reasons: sluggish regulatory catch-ups, an investor climate allergic to big-risk plays, and global capital flows reorienting toward safer geographies.
In 2024, blockchain startups in Africa raised $122.5 million—36% less than 2023’s $191.4 million, according to the latest African Blockchain Report by Crypto Valley Venture Capital (CV VC).
This marks the second consecutive annual drop since the sector’s $474 million peak in 2022. But unlike past years where investors spread their bets widely, 2024’s funding paints a clearer picture of what venture capitalists now care about in Africa’s blockchain ecosystem.
The capital is shrinking—and concentrating
Only five countries in Africa attracted blockchain venture funding in 2024. Seychelles led with $38.85 million across eight deals—despite a 56% drop from 2023.
This wasn’t surprising. Seychelles has long been a magnet for crypto exchanges and trading platforms, thanks to its favourable regulatory stance, tax neutrality on foreign-sourced income, and reputation as a trusted offshore jurisdiction.
Seychelles does not ban assets for incorporated companies, and its regulatory framework offers clear licencing for digital asset businesses. Global crypto exchanges like KuCoin and OKX have used Seychelles as a home base, giving the island nation global name recognition in blockchain circles.
That appeal matters. In 2024, companies headquartered outside Africa but registered in Seychelles received over half (51.8%) of all blockchain funding on the continent, amounting to $63.4 million.
Some of these firms may not be building primarily for African users but are drawn to the country’s regulatory haven and operational ease. As a result, Seychelles’ numbers may overstate Africa-focused funding.
Nigeria rises, Kenya stumbles
Seychelles’ mixed bag of Africa-focused companies aside, Nigeria saw the biggest growth. Blockchain startups raised $18.86 million across 10 deals, a significant jump from just $1.57 million in the previous year.
This growth likely reflects a bounce-back in investor confidence, especially after Nigeria lifted its two-year ban on crypto bank transactions in 2023.
Kenya, on the other hand, suffered a steep drop. Its blockchain startups raised just $5.99 million across four deals in 2024—down nearly 84% from $36.1 million the year before.
South Africa followed a similar trend, with a 51% decline, raising $22.54 million from five deals, down from $46 million in 2023.
In Morocco, only one blockchain deal happened: Tookeez, a startup building a blockchain-based loyalty points marketplace, raised $1.5 million in seed funding. This was the country’s first blockchain investment since at least 2021, hinting at how investor confidence there is cautiously growing, given Morocco’s evolving stance on crypto.
A thesis that favours consumers over builders
The structure of the deals in 2024 indicates a shift in investor priorities. Of the $122.5 million raised, early-stage funding rounds dominated, with pre-seed and seed rounds making up $50.3 million, and early-stage VC contributing $31.3 million. That’s a combined two-thirds of total funding.
-stage VC brought in another $40.5 million, while ecosystem grants and accelerator funding accounted for just $495,000—suggesting that philanthropic or development-driven capital could be playing a crucial, but negligible funding role at this stage.
The companies attracting funding also say a lot about investor appetite. Centralised financial service platforms—such as crypto exchanges and payment companies—raised the lion’s share, $49.6 million.
Decentralised finance (DeFi) projects raised a total of $36.3 million, with half of that coming from just three startups—Azuro, Canza Finance, and ELFi. Meanwhile, funding for the non-fungible token (NFT) and gaming sector plummeted to $6.9 million, down 75% from last year.
Infrastructure and developer tools fared even worse. Blockchain network protocols attracted no venture funding at all in 2024. Blockchain-based data management tools, such as BanQu, attracted more funding than other infrastructure-adjacent startups, raising $24.4 million. Zone, which raised $8.5 million, was classified not as an infrastructure or Layer 1 project, but as a blockchain-based financial services provider.
Blockchain venture capital is clearly flowing to consumer-facing products, not to the harder-to-scale developer platforms or protocol innovations that often underpin long-term innovation. Investors are not betting on protocol-layer innovations anymore. They’re looking for applications with clearer monetisation paths, especially those that generate fees from user transactions.
This shows a bias toward growth capital over patient capital, where quick user acquisition and mapped-out revenue models matter more than complex, slow-to-scale infrastructure projects.
The risk here is that Africa’s blockchain ecosystem becomes overly skewed toward trading apps and exchanges, rather than nurturing globally relevant infrastructure products that could become the next Ethereum or Solana.
Pan-African ambitions versus local realities
Pan-African blockchain companies—startups that operate across multiple African markets, such as Yellow Card—raised $34.7 million from just two deals, nearly doubling 2023’s $18 million. This suggests some appetite for startups trying to solve problems across borders. But that enthusiasm remains relatively shallow compared to the bets placed on offshore-registered entities.
At a macro level, these funding patterns show that venture capital in Africa’s blockchain sector is becoming more selective, more cautious, and more commercial. Investors want clear paths to returns, and they’re focusing their attention on categories that can prove product-market fit quickly—often by tapping into the still-growing demand for crypto trading and remittance tools.
But this leaves a critical gap: the under-investment in blockchain infrastructure and developer tools could slow down Africa’s ability to build foundational tech for its own digital economies—and for global export.
In the long term, Africa needs more than just crypto exchanges. It needs protocols, developer platforms, and infrastructure that can compete globally. Otherwise, it risks becoming a passive consumer of blockchain innovation, rather than an originator of it.
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