Rami Aboul Naga, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said that Egypt has achieved rapid growth in venture capital investments in the fintech industry over the past years, reaching a new level of $167 million in the first half of this year, which increased by 12 times compared to 2017.
This came in a speech he delivered on behalf of the bank's governor, at the first Egyptian summit for venture capital investments, under the title "Egypt; your investment gateway to Africa and the Middle East" in the field of venture capital; in partnership with GIZ Egypt on behalf of the German Development Fund, AfricaGrow Fund and Changelabs Foundation.
The deputy governor noted that according to the latest FinTech Egypt report, the FinTech ecosystem has grown at a rapid pace, with about 150 startups, service providers, enablers, innovative and young FinTech companies.
Aboul Naga added that he is looking forward to approximately 110 FinTech-enabled startups and payment service providers to raise funds in the next 12 months with approximate amounts of more than $500,000.
He stated that ongoing regulatory developments are the priorities of the Central Bank of Egypt’s agenda to ensure the long-term growth of the fintech industry and the investment environment in venture capital, with the help of strategic enablers such as establishing digital financial infrastructure, supporting young innovative entrepreneurs, applying legal and regulatory rules, and boosting investmentsin the field of financial technology.
He explained that this was well proven during the recent launch of nclude this year; a concentrated fund backed by FinTech by the three banks; Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, Banque du Caire, the Investment Group for Electronic Finance and the Egyptian Banks Company (EBC).
He stated that this fund aims to be the largest focused on financial technology in the Middle East and Africa, with a target capital of $150 million.
He continued that despite the serious macroeconomic challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Egypt was one of the few countries that experienced a positive GDP growth rate in 2020, and thus recorded an impressive growth rate of 8.3% in terms of real GDP in Q2 of FY2021/22.
As for the financial inclusion strategy, the Central Bank of Egypt succeeded in achieving an inclusion rate of more than 56%. He pointed out that startups in Egypt have grown significantly over the past few years, until today; according to the Egypt Startup Entity Ecosystem Report 2021, Egypt is home to a total of 600 tech startups.
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