The hottest fintech market you aren’t paying attention to

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Tage Kene-Okafor on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch’s key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continent’s expanding venture capital totals, public company performance and startup ecosystem.

Given that we’ve paid attention to just how much money African startups are raising, we wanted to have Tage on to give us a better, deeper understanding of the continent’s technology activity. Here’s what we got into:

• The power of Y Combinator in Africa: Is the well-known American accelerator a kingmaker in Africa? Or are we merely seeing more of its activity thanks to our own information biases?
• Fintech as core focus: As in many markets, fintech investment and startup activity stand out in Africa. We wanted to better understand why that’s the case in Africa, and what startups are building in the realm of financial technology.
• African e-commerce: The continent’s e-commerce market is perhaps best known through the lens of Jumia, a public tech company that works in the sale of goods online, and their delivery. How quickly is e-commerce growing in Africa, and which startups could be the next breakouts? We asked Tage.

Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup!