Every year, African fintech startups raise millions of dollars from investors who believe they are funding the future of money on the continent. Some of these companies go on to become household names. Others disappear quietly.

Between 2023 and 2025 alone, at least 29 African tech startups shut down, according to Startup Graveyard Africa, a platform that tracks these closures. Fintech accounted for 24% of all shutdowns, the highest share of any sector.

There is a story surrounding the patterns of this failure rate. Because when you look closely at the companies that closed, you notice the same things going wrong again and again. And understanding what went wrong is the only way the next generation of founders can avoid it.

Here are six reasons African fintech startups die, with case studies for each.

1. Funding starvation

The most common reason African fintech startups shut down is simple: they ran out of money and could not raise more. The Startup Graveyard Africa 2024 report found that 58% of startups fail primarily because of financial difficulties.

In places like the United States or Europe, a promising startup can often find a new investor when one drops out. In Africa, the investor pool is much smaller. According to the World Economic Forum, 92% of all tech investment on the continent flows to just four countries — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. For startups outside those markets, or even for many within them, finding money is brutally hard.

Lazerpay (Nigeria, 2021–2023) is one of the saddest stories of this kind. Founded by a 19-year-old named Njoku Emmanuel, the company built a tool that let businesses accept cryptocurrency payments and pay out in local currencies such as the naira or the Ghanaian cedi.  Within months, over 3,000 businesses had signed up. It looked like a breakout success.

Then, a key investor, Nestcoin, had its own funds wiped out when the global crypto exchange FTX collapsed in 2022. Nestcoin could no longer fund the startups in its portfolio. Lazerpay tried everything to find a replacement and failed. In April 2023, Emmanuel announced the shutdown on Twitter. “We fought hard to keep the lights on for as long as possible,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, we are now at a point where we need to shut down.”

Last updated: May 6, 2026