Africa’s fintech sector continues to expand, yet investment flows remain strikingly uneven. A handful of dominant markets, commonly referred to as Africa’s “Big Four” (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt) still attract the lion’s share of venture capital, absorbing close to 80 percent of startup funding in early 2025, according to Africa: The Big Deal. For innovators outside these hotspots, the path to scale is far more complex. They face the dual challenge of proving both their market viability and their ecosystem’s investability.

In Gabon, CLIKPAY, a digital payments company supported under UNCDF’s Digital Finance for Resilience (DFS4Res) programme is a clear example of this. Its story is one of determination, overcoming regulatory hurdles, operational setbacks, and even political instability, but also one of promise. It is a young fintech company building products that respond directly to local needs in a region where innovation is needed but often overlooked.

CLIKPAY field representatives engage traders in a local market in Gabon, demonstrating how digital payment solutions can support everyday transactions. Photo: CLIKPAY.

A fintech built from local realities

CLIKPAY was born from the insight that, despite Gabon’s high mobile penetration and strong connectivity, digital financial services remain limited. The wider region shows the same pattern. In 2023, even as electronic wallets accounted for 73 percent of all transaction volumes, only $1 billion in digital transactions were processed on GIMACPAY, the regional interoperable payments platform for the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC). This relatively modest value points to a gap between access and effective usage, particularly when compared to more mature digital payment ecosystems in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Unlike East and West Africa, the Central African countries trail behind in innovative digital finance solutions, and microentrepreneurs in particular struggle to access financial tools. CLIKPAY stepped into this gap by offering a smartphone and a web-based payments platform tailored to everyday use cases such as deposits, withdrawals, sub-regional remittances across the CEMAC zone, utilities payments, tax and duty payments, and even Schengen visa application fees.

Over time, CLIKPAY has expanded to all nine provinces of Gabon, strengthened interoperability through integrations with Airtel Money, Moov Money and GIMACPay, and built strategic partnerships with utility service providers such as SEEG (water and electricity) and Canal+/CanalBox. (TV and internet subscriptions), and its merchant and agent network has grown from about 500 to over 5,000 across the country.

The first big break: licensing and UNCDF support

CLIKPAY became the first fintech in Central Africa to secure a license from COBAC, the supranational banking supervisor, allowing it to operate as a payment service provider across all countries of the CEMAC zone. A milestone that required years of navigating rigid, slow-moving financial regulations. This compliance step was essential for operations and investor confidence.

As the Head of revenue assurance and fraud management, Axel Mbele notes, “No investor will put capital into a non-compliant fintech”.

During this period, UNCDF with the support of its partners, the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), played a critical role. Through technical training in collaboration with Digital Frontiers Institute, and grant funding of $150,000 for a national expansion and communications campaign, CLIKPAY was able to strengthen its operations and sustain activities during years when their revenues were limitedand fluctuating.

Before UNCDF’s support, CLIKPAY struggled to attract investors due to early-stage losses, the long period it operated with no positive income, and regulatory delays that made investors hesitant. As Alex Mbele noted, “Investors look at the financial statements and see that we were in the red,” making it difficult to secure backing during this phase of ‘the valley of death’ (the phase when costs exceed revenue and investors are typically hesitant). UNCDF’s support allowed CLIKPAY to strengthen its compliance, expand its footprint, and, thanksto the specific backing of a UN agency, enhance its credibility. As a result, the company began attracting investor interest, even though securing capital remains an ongoing is a challenge.

Why investment stays concentrated elsewhere according to the data

CLIKPAY’s experience reflects a broader structural pattern in Africa’s fintech landscape, in how fintech investment remains highly concentrated in a small number of markets. A pattern that explains why strong innovators in smaller economies are consistently underfunded.

Fintech still commands a large share of startup funding on the continent, but concentration is stark”, confirms Max Cuvellier Giacomelli, co-founder of Africa: The Big Deal, a platform that tracks startup investment trends across Africa and is a reference in this field. He points out that in 2025, roughly a third of all startup capital still went to fintech, with a small number of very large deals driving totals and three quarters or more of fintech capital clustered in four markets. He highlights several structural reasons for this concentration:

• Market size dominates investor logic: big, populous economies (and larger GDP) offer clearer paths to scale while expanding in smaller markets remains costly and complex due to regulatory fragmentation, high operating costs and limited regional integration.
• Ecosystem maturity and networks matter: dense clusters of angel investors, repeat founders, accelerators, universities, and diaspora capital make Tier 1 markets more investable. Smaller markets lack this base, so fewer deals happen, and investors do not see enough evidence that it is a strong place to invest.
• Regulatory environments can slow growth: in Central Africa, regulation is rigid and slow to evolve, often shaped by conservative banking interests. Frequent rule changes can also deter investment. What investors and founders need most is clarity and stability.

Broader research echoes the same pattern. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) regional analysis of digital payment Innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa underscores that stronger digital infrastructure, enabling regulation, and interoperability are essential to crowd-in private sector participation and improve the operating environment for investment.

Agent Seydou supports a customer using the CLIKPAY mobile application, demonstrating how digital payments are becoming more accessible across Gabon. Through UNCDF’s partnership with CLIKPAY, frontline agents like Seydou are helping broaden trust in digital finance and extend reliable payment services to underserved communities. Photo: CLIKPAY.

Investment tracking data also frames the continent as a tiered landscape. Tier-1 markets, the “Big Four” dominate investment. Tier 2 markets (e.g., Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania) have produced visible champions. Tier 3 markets, including Gabon, host promising innovators that have not yet attracted sustained investor attention. As such, CLIKPAY operates in what is considered a Tier 3 market, and is proving that strong teams exist even where capital does not naturally flow.

What emerging markets like Gabon can offer

“There’s real value beyond the Big Four,” Cuvellier Giacomelli argues, if investors look for niche, high relevance use cases where local champions can emerge with less competition. He sees promise in ventures that digitize existing behaviours (e.g., government fees, utilities, education payments etc.) rather than imposing new ones. For CLIKPAY, as a local Gabonese fintech, these strengths are visible in its public service integrations, merchant payments push, and subregional remittances across CEMAC, areas where customer demand is tangible and addressable.

How development actors help bridge the gap

Analysis of start-up investment patterns highlights four interventions that consistently help tech entrepreneurs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets move toward investment readiness. He emphasizes starting with practical capacity training on compliance, product design, and the fundamentals of fundraising so teams can meet basic investor expectations. He also highlights the importance of patient, catalytic capital in the form of equity-free grants, such as those from UNCDF that can help startups cross the stage where costs exceed revenue and outside investment is still uncertain.

A third factor is to keep the scope pragmatic by focusing on solving a concrete local problem first, prove product–market fit, and only then consider expanding to a Pan-African platform. Finally, he points to the need for ecosystem scaffolding (the active angel networks, regular regulator–founder dialogue, and open data resources), which gives founders practical support and provides investors with the visibility and confidence they look for.

Why CLIKPAY’s story matters

CLIKPAY shows that groundbreaking fintechs exist in underfunded markets, and that, with the right push, they can scale. It also shows that investment does not have to stay focused in just a few countries. The patterns can shift when investors see credible teams, better data and stronger local success stories emerge. CLIKPAY is one such champion, but its ability to scale depends on whether the ecosystem responds.

A CLIKPAY field representative meets with traders in a bustling market in Gabon to share information on how digital payments can simplify their daily transactions. Photo: CLIKPAY.

UNCDF takes the first risk

CLIKPAY’s journey shows that early-stage market fintechs can reach investment readiness, but only when someone is willing to take the first risk. “And this is exactly where UNCDF plays its catalytic role”, says Bram Peters, Programme Manager at UNCDF. “We deploy risk-absorbing and patient concessional capital to attract investors to commit growth capital with confidence.”

Hence, catalytic capital is only the beginning. Once UNCDF helps innovators like CLIKPAY clear the hardest early hurdles, including regulatory compliance, product validation, and initial market expansion, the next phase can be taken up by investors, DFIs, regional funds, and local angel networks. They are the ones who can provide the growth capital required to scale nationally and across the region.

This shift requires not only willingness, but dedication to go beyond the beaten path of Tier 1 and 2 markets to countries that are less obvious, such as Gabon, where the opportunity is there, but visibility for investors is typically low. If that happens, companies like CLIKPAY and many other innovators across Africa’s overlooked markets can unlock significant economic and social value.