A new report from the UN Capital Development Fund examines how venture capital continues to flow around the majority of the African continent, using a little-known Gabonese payments startup as a window into what the industry is missing.
Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt (Africa’s so-called Big Four) absorbed close to 80% of startup funding in early 2025. For fintech companies outside those markets, the path to scale requires proving not just that their product works, but that their entire ecosystem is worth backing.
CLIKPAY, a digital payments firm based in Gabon, illustrates both the difficulty and the possibility. Operating in a market where electronic wallets account for 73% of transaction volumes yet digital payment values remain modest, the company built a platform for deposits, remittances, utility payments, and government fees. It has since expanded to all nine of Gabon’s provinces and grown its merchant and agent network from around 500 to more than 5,000. It also became the first fintech in Central Africa to obtain a licence from COBAC, the regional banking supervisor, allowing it to operate across the six-country CEMAC zone.
None of that came easily. Early losses, regulatory delays, and the absence of a local investor ecosystem pushed CLIKPAY through what the report calls the valley of death — the phase when costs outrun revenue and outside capital stays away. A $150,000 grant from UNCDF, backed by the EU and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, helped the company survive that period and build the compliance record that investors eventually required.
The structural barriers are well documented. Smaller markets lack the angel networks, repeat founders, and regulatory clarity that make Tier 1 markets legible to investors. The IMF has separately noted that interoperability and enabling regulation are essential to drawing in private capital across sub-Saharan Africa.
The report’s conclusion is pointed: credible fintech teams exist well beyond the Big Four, but they will remain invisible until investors, development institutions, and regulators are willing to look.
