A close examination of Africa's current unicorns and near-unicorns, including Flutterwave, OPay, Wave, Andela and Chipper Cash, reveals a set of consistent signals about how scale is achieved on the continent, where value is truly being created and what investors and founders should be paying attention to next. Beneath the headline valuations lies a clearer story about infrastructure, distribution and long-term execution.
Where value is being created todayAfrica's unicorn landscape remains relatively concentrated, both by sector and by geography. Financial services dominate, particularly payments, digital banking, mobile money and fintech infrastructure. Flutterwave, valued at approximately 3bn, OPay at 2.7bn, Wave at 1.7bn and Interswitch at around 1bn all share a defining characteristic: they sit at the financial core of everyday economic activity.
This dominance is not accidental. Across much of Africa, financial services remain under-penetrated, fragmented and inefficient. Startups that successfully build payments rails, agent networks, merchant tools or lending infrastructure are not simply creating consumer-facing apps. They are building systems that businesses, households and informal markets rely on daily. As a result, their growth is closely tied to real economic activity rather than discretionary spending or short-term trends.
