South Africa has the most developed startup ecosystem on the continent, according to a new report, ahead of Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria.
This is according to rankings released by Startupblink, a global startup ecosystem map with tens of thousands of registered startups, co-working spaces, and accelerators.
Startupblink’s global ranking index of 125 countries and 900 cities measures startup ecosystem strength and activity, and finds the top countries in Africa are South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and Nigeria, ranked 38th, 53rd, 54th and 57th respectively. Their top cities were Cape Town, Nairobi, Cairo, and Lagos.
This confirms the findings of the recently released Disrupt Africa African Tech Startups Funding Report 2017, which found these ecosystems were also the most attractive when it came to investments in tech startups.
The United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Israel and Germany took the top five places on the ranking, with North African countries Tunisia (65) and Morocco (67) the next African markets to feature.
Mauritius (73), Ghana (83), Cameroon (85), Uganda (88), Zambia (89), Botswana (93), Mali (99) and Ethiopia (100) were the other African ecosystems to make the global top 100.
Two African countries were also ranked joint last of the 125 startup ecosystems Startupblink has data for, with Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) scoring the same total as Cuba and Afghanistan to prop up the rankings.
Those interested can check out the ranking tables here, and switch between country and city rankings. The video below explains the results and methodology.
