The Disrupt Africa team is delighted to present to you our 15th research publication, and it is a very special one indeed. For the first time, our research department has released a geographically-focused report, with Egypt the subject. It is only relatively recently that Egypt has emerged as a tech powerhouse for Africa, but emerge it has. From relatively low levels of activity, and even smaller levels of investment, as recently as 2015, the country now rivals - and even surpasses - more established startup ecosystems such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya for levels of entrepreneurial innovation and investment.
And with one “unicorn” in the shape of Fawry, soon to be two once Swvl lists publicly, Egypt is building up an impressive track record in the tech startup space. The Egyptian Startup Ecosystem Report 2021 report tells that story, tracking the growth of Egypt’s tech startup ecosystem since 2015. We meet the startups, learn about their founders, find out what verticals they are active in, where they were incubated or accelerated, and who funded them. And we dig deeper into the broader ecosystem, taking a look at funding sources, hubs, incubators and accelerators, and detailing what support is available to startups from government, corporates and universities. In the interest of building bridges between Egypt and the wider continent, moreover, we have also included a section on Egyptian startups expanding their businesses into Sub-Saharan Africa. This relatively new development, whereby Egyptian startups scale to African markets in addition to, or rather than, Middle Eastern ones, is encouraging, and we look at best practices and explore the pull factors for the startups taking these steps.
