The Africa B2B Tech Report
Issue No. 88. Africa-Middle East B2B tech news & insights for 15 April 2025.
The Africa B2B Tech Report is a weekly+ newsletter curating news and insights on the development of B2B technology in Africa and the Middle East and the ecosystem of partners, builders, and developers supporting this development.
The Report is written and edited by Charles Laughlin, Chief Content Officer for BigFive Digital. Charles is a career tech journalist, conference producer, and moderator.
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The Africa B2B Tech News Digest
B2B Tech News & Insights for 15th April 2025
Stitch’s Series B Brings Lifetime Funding to $107M
The South African enterprise payments platform Stitch has brought its lifetime equity raise to US$107 million with its new E1.05 billion (US$55 million) Series B round led by QED Investors.
Kiaan Pillay, Priyen Pillay, and Junaid Dadan founded Stitch in 2019 . All three remain in leadership roles today. The company was in stealth mode until 2021.
In a LinkedIn post, Stitch Co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay said the company will use the money to build on its existing product set and expand into new areas.
“Today, Stitch is much more than a PSP. We're a true omnichannel payments platform, serving enterprise businesses online and in-person. We'll also soon be moving into acquiring, enabling us to offer clients an end-to-end card product with full control over the whole product lifecycle.”
QED Investors is a US-based venture capital firm that is focused on fintech. In fact, its LinkedIn page describes the firm as “Fintech operators turned fintech investors.”
QED’s list of investments includes some big names in global fintech, including Klarna, Fundera, SoFi and Credit Karma, among many others.
QED Partner Gbenga Ajayi explained why they are investing in Stitch.
“Their ongoing expansion from a PSP to a comprehensive payments partner, including robust in-person payments and acquiring solutions, demonstrates their unique ability to anticipate market needs and execute at scale,” said Ajayi, who is QED’s Head of Africa and the Middle East.
In addition to QED Investors, new investors participating in this round include Flourish Ventures, Norrsken22 and Glynn Capital.
These latest investors join existing Stitch investors that include Ribbit Capital, PayPal Ventures, Firstminute Capital. Stitch also has a large roster of angel investors that include South African comedian Trevor Noah. A number of leading executives from some of the biggest names in fintech are also among Stitch’s stable of investors. These include Klarna founder Niklas Adalberth, Coinbase President & COO Emilie Choi, Venmo founder André Mohamed, and many others.
The Data Dump
Every issue of The Report features interesting chart data that was shared with us, or that we found online, that is relevant to the continent’s B2B tech ecosystem.
We turn to Africa: The Big Deal, a consistent source for data-driven insights on tech funding in Africa. This chart (found on LinkedIn), shows startup funding in Africa is stabilizing after two years of steady declines.
Another chart from Africa: The Big Deal counters the conventional narrative that when the West catches a cold, Africa comes down with pneumonia.
This graph, shared by ABD’s Max Cuvellier Giacomelli, argues that Africa, when it comes to startup investing, tracks consistently with the rest of the world.
“Africa is no outlier: the same trends we see in global investments apply to the continent, only with a 6-month lag,” Giacomelli says in his post.
He offers this to support his contention that the blithely-held view that what hits the West hard hits Africa much harder is indeed a false narrative.
“Yes, the continent's start-up ecosystem attracts less than 1% of start-up investments worldwide, far less than its share of GDP, let alone population,” he writes. “But No, it is not more prone to disasters and crises than the average; that's not what the data shows.”
Recommended Reading
Please enjoy this curation of content relevant to the continent’s B2B tech ecosystem.
Innovation City Cape Town Announces Entrepreneur of the Year Finalists
Should Africa ‘Exit the Expat’?
New Untapped Global Investment Takes on Kenya’s SME Credit Gap
Takealot Examines How GenZ Brand Discovery is Evolving in Africa
Takealot Continues Its Lead Over Amazon, Temu, and Schein in South Africa
Happy Pay, Peach Payments Join Forces to Extend BNPL in SA
VAT Hike Loom Large for South African SMEs
AI-Powered Sales Assistants Are Coming to Africa
Are Stablecoins Transforming Africa’s Financial Landscape?
Meta, MTN Collaborate to Enhance Voice Quality
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