The African tech startup space has continued to be dominated by financial technology companies. These fintech companies have gained more traction, attracted more funding and generally have positioned themselves as the beacons of the African tech space.

All the top 6 funding raised on the continent so far in 2021 have been raised by fintech companies. And all 5 tech unicorns in Africa today are fintech companies. This just shows how dominant financial services tech companies are on the continent.

However, only one of them was dominant enough to make CB Insight’s ranking of the Top 250 fintechs in the world.

Nigerian payments company, Opay, is the only fintech from Africa to make that hallowed Top 250 list. The fintech made the list for the second consecutive year.

The SoftBank-backed fintech company which only recently confirmed its unicorn status following a $400m raise was listed in the Payments Processing and Network subsector.

Last year, Africa had three startups in the list; Nigeria’s Opay and Palmpay, and South Africa’s Yoco.

According to CB Insights, the 250 companies were selected from a pool of over 17,000 companies around the globe. While some of these companies applied for themselves, others were nominated.

The 2021 Fintech 250 cohort has raised approximately $73.8 billion in aggregate funding across nearly 1,200 deals since 2016. This includes startups at different investment stages of development, from early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns.

118 of the 250 companies selected (47%) are unicorns, all valued at $1 billion or above as of their latest funding round.

The fintechs were chosen based on several factors like data submitted by the companies, company business models and momentum in the market, and Mosaic scores, a CB Insights proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.