Kenya 
The USD 330 Billion African SME Credit Gap Is the Wrong Number to Chase
Nigeria
Financial Services
The USD 330 billion African SME credit gap is the most-cited statistic in African fintech. Development finance institutions quote it in every pitch deck. Our view is that the number, while technically correct, has become a trap. It leads operators to build products that address the wrong segment of the gap, and it leads investors to fund business models that cannot close it. Here is the gap we should be talking about instead.
Every pitch deck for an African SME lending startup in the last five years has quoted the same number. The International Finance Corporation estimates that the African small and medium-sized enterprise credit gap is over USD 330 billion. This is the difference between the credit African SMEs need to grow and the credit...
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