Norrsken's 2025 Impact/100: African Fintech Stars and Innovative Startups Shine
The Norrsken Foundation has unveiled its 2025 Impact/100 list, highlighting the world's most promising early-stage impact startups. This year's list features a strong African presence, with twelve startups making the cut, and fintech leading the pack with five inclusions.
One notable Kenyan startup, VunaPay, has registered over 20,000 farmers across 30 cooperatives, processing payments worth over KES 70 million (approximately $550,000). It tackles delayed payments for smallholder farmers by ensuring they're paid almost immediately after delivering their produce, with another 100,000 farmers on its waitlist.
Another Kenyan startup, Octavia Carbon, raised $5 million in seed funding and secured about $1.1 million in non-dilutive financing through pre-sales of carbon credits. It uses local geology to capture carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground, building technology to reduce emissions and create a sustainable model through carbon credits.
Senegal's Wave, offering mobile-based financial services across West Africa, secured about $137 million in debt financing to support working capital and fuel expansion into new markets. It serves over 20 million users monthly through a network of 150,000 agents and a team of approximately 3,000 employees.
The 2025 Impact/100 list was compiled from over 1,400 nominations sourced from 50 nominators, including investment funds, academic institutions, and NGOs. Despite no Nigerian fintech startups being featured, the list reflects the growing strength of African startups in fintech, cleantech, and agritech.
The 2025 Impact/100 list underscores the potential of African startups to drive positive change. With fintech leading the way, and innovative solutions like VunaPay and Octavia Carbon making an impact, the future looks promising for early-stage impact ventures on the continent.
