Despite the wiles of the economy, Seven Nigerian tech firm broke protocols to become some of the fastest-growing companies in Africa, going by the record given by Financial Times Africa’s Fastest Growing Companies 2024 list. These businesses rode on the wings of the pandemic to grow their revenue to $979.18 million.
The response of each companies to Covid-19 pandemic and the continent economic problems surfaced in their ranking the third year .Financial Times collaborated with global research company, statista and Business Day for the project.
Financial Times doesn’t cover all companies on the continent, The ranking is measured by the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the revenue between 2019 & 2022 which includes 125 companies across Africa.
The high performing Nigerian firms are tech firms which includes “Afex, Monie point, Paga, Omniretail, Thrive Agric, Seamlesshr, and Fairmoney.
Afex grew its revenue to $415.54 million from $8.38 million, Omniretail ranked as the fastest-growing company in africa for 2024 grew its revenue to $139.88 million from $0.25 million, Moniepoint grew to $ 148.66 million from $9.25 million, thrive Agric (which almost barked up not long ago) grew to $73.26 million from $8.1 million, seamless its grew to $2.62 million from $0.38 million, pega grew to $56.29 million from $19.59 million.
World bank recorded that Covid-19 crisis lead Nigeria into the deepest recession since the 1980s, This pandemic also pushed over five million more Nigerians into poverty by 2022 stated by the Washington based bank.
Abebe Selassie, the head of the international Monetary Fund’s African Development show his concern towards the less privileged countries who were badly affected by the pandemic.
African is falling further behind Financial time stated that Nigeria used to be African’s largest economy in 2022 but due to the series of currency devaluations the fore cast presented by IMF not long ago revealed that the country fell to fourth place this year in 2023 Nigeria economic as prices spiralled upward and the naira went into free fall, Despite this, the country had the second-highest number of companies on the ranking.
Nigerian business hero’s are leveraging on the economic slowdown and in return meeting the needs of their customers.
The Group chief executive officer of Moniepoint in person of Tosin Eniolorunda stated that “2023 was an important year for Moniepoint because they were able to make progress for the first time in a personal bank and their next target is to enter new African markets”.
Andrew Mori, CEO of Deimos a South African firm on financial Times’s list laid emphasis on how African is progressing technology “He said we will continue to build spectre by taking in approaches and strategies with battle-toasted designed plan for the African market”.
