Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The third year of our now expanded ranking of Africa\u2019s Fastest Growing Companies comes against a background in which many economies are struggling to recover from the Covid pandemic.Economic growth in Africa, overall, in 2023 was 3.2 per cent, according to the IMF \u2014 lower than in Asia, which grew at nearly 5 per cent. Given the African continent\u2019s fast population expansion, this underperformance is even starker in per capita terms. Rather than closing the gap with wealthier regions, on aggregate, Africa is falling further behind.\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to sell an El Dorado story in Africa,\u201d says St\u00e9phane Bacquaert, managing partner at Adenia, a private equity firm specialising in Africa.Yet the FT-Statista list, he says, reveals the type of companies that, even in hard times, have managed to grow.The key, says Magdi Amin, co-founder and managing partner at venture capital firm African Renaissance Partners, is to provide answers, often by applying technology, to \u201clegacy issues\u201d. These include the poor electricity grid, lack of access to banking and high transaction costs.\u201cFrankly governments and other providers have really failed to deliver the services that the growing and rapidly urbanising population wants,\u201d says Amin, adding that the ranking of 125 includes many companies seeking to meet those challenges.Abebe Selassie, head of the IMF\u2019s Africa department, echoes those sentiments. While the macro environment remains bad and poverty levels have increased, he says, many businesses have forged ahead: \u201cMuch of the private sector, particularly the private sector that\u2019s not directly reliant on government business, has shown incredible resilience.\u201dHerholdt\u2019s Group (32 in the ranking) provides solar equipment to homes and businesses in South Africa, a country bedevilled by power cuts. The company pivoted from legacy electrical equipment to renewable energy after a tussle between its family owners.Adenia backed the younger generation and the business has taken off. \u201cAnyone can tell you electricity is a huge problem in South Africa,\u201d says Bacquaert. \u201cSo, if you solve that problem, you must have a winner.\u201dAfrican companies are solving local, regional and global problemsAgain, it was a Nigerian company \u2014 this time Omniretail \u2014 that came top. As in previous years, the winning business is a B2B ecommerce platform that helps small retailers, kiosk owners, and market traders digitise their business.Mauritian-domiciled Kyosk Digital (ranked 2) \u2014 which describes its business as \u201cempowering traditional African retailers, farmers and their customers with a digital first and data-led distribution platform\u201d \u2014 performs a similar role. Founded in Nairobi, it has since expanded to Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria.South Africa has 42 companies in the top 125, followed by Nigeria\u2019s 25. Kenya tied third at 12, with Morocco. In last year\u2019s list of 100, Morocco had just three winners.African Renaissance Partners is betting that as the venture capital industry \u2014 not much more than a decade old in Africa \u2014 matures, start-up successes will spread beyond the big hubs of Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. It invests seed capital in companies in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Amin predicts that, in five years, the FT ranking will include many more companies from these and other \u201cnon-hub\u201d countries.Still, there\u2019s no disguising the fact that 2023 was \u201ca rough year for the tech ecosystem\u201d, according to Partech, an investment platform for tech and digital companies. Its annual survey of venture capital investment in Africa showed a 46 per cent drop from 2022, to $3.5bn, raised from 547 deals, which was also fewer than in recent years.Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, an Africa-focused tech growth fund, however, says there are signs the market has now bottomed out. Since November, venture capital firms have raised more than $650mn in funding for Africa, with Norskenn22 raising $205mn.Novitske says valuations have become attractive again after an investment exodus last year. She prefers asset-light companies, especially those harnessing AI, some of which are capable of providing solutions to global problems. She highlights HearX (ranked 10), a South African-based company that uses AI to diagnose and treat hearing problems and now sells its products in the US.\u201cAfrican companies are not only solving local or regional problems but global ones,\u201d observes Aniko Szigetvari, a founding partner at Atlantica Ventures, a pan-African venture capital fund. \u201cIf you figure it out in Africa, you can take it to other markets.\u201dSzigetvari cites Lelapa AI, which transcribes chatbot messages into African languages such as isiZulu and Sesotho, as an example of a company with transferable technology. Another, from this year\u2019s ranking (21) is Tymebank, a neobank that is taking its South African-developed model to the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore.Nevertheless, there are other big hurdles for companies, over and above the sluggish macro-environment. Businesses frequently mention currency and regulator risk, and negative investor sentiment as a result of political and security upheavals \u2014 including in the coup-prone Sahel.For Valerie Labi, whose German-Ghanaian start-up Wahu is manufacturing e-bikes in Accra, the real problems can be more mundane. She blames bureaucracy in Ghana and in cross-border trade for hampering start-ups. African banks, she says, are reluctant to finance innovative start-ups like hers.Bacquaert says some signs are evident of local pension fund investment at last finding its way to fast-growing start-ups, with Ghana, Kenya and South Africa leading the way. \u201cThis has opened up a pool of money,\u201d he adds: \u201cAnd you don\u2019t have to pitch them on the African story, because they already understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The third year of our now expanded ranking of Africa\u2019s Fastest Growing Companies comes against a background in which many economies are struggling to recover from the Covid pandemic.Economic growth in Africa, overall, in 2023 was 3.2 per cent, according to the IMF \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}