(Bloomberg) — Former Juventus football star Blaise Matuidi is joining U.S. venture firms in investing in Sudan’s nascent startup scene, betting on the North African nation’s untapped potential despite an economic crisis.
Matuidi, a French midfielder who now plays for Inter Miami, is putting an undisclosed amount into Bloom, a Khartoum-based fintech firm that plans to offer digital payment and other services, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ahmed Ismail. Global Founders Capital and Goodwater Capital also contributed to the pre-seed funding round.
“Sudan is at a technological inflection point, underpinned by a large, young, tech-savvy and entrepreneurial population,” Ismail said in an interview from the country’s capital.
Such optimism is rare when it comes to the impoverished country of more than 40 million people, which looked set to emerge from decades of dictatorship with the ouster of autocrat Omar al-Bashir in mass protests in 2019, but has slid back under military control after an October coup. Foreign donors have frozen billions of dollars of aid, while blockades by protesters have slashed exports.
Startups across Africa raised a record of over $5 billion last year, mainly for fintech companies, according to Briter Bridges Intelligence, a London-based company which tracks such investments. While neighboring Egypt is a top destination alongside Nigeria, Sudan has seen little interest. The country was isolated for decades from global markets due to U.S. sanctions that were only recently lifted.
Signs of change came in 2021 when alsoug, Sudan’s largest digital classifieds and marketplace company, got $5 million in funding from a group co-led by Egyptian e-payments firm Fawry for Banking & Payment Technology Services SAE.
“Now everyone is saying that it is possible,” said Ahmed Elmurtada, managing partner at 249Startups, a local technology hub that’s launching a $500,000 startup fund called Rhino Investments. It plans to fund 14 early-stage startups, help them grow and then exit to repeat with more investments.
“The economy is doing badly, but when you look at the potential holistically you realize that this is an untapped market,” with less than 10% of the population using bank accounts, Elmurtada said. It’s “high risk, high return,” he said.
Providing support to entrepreneurs “and creating hope is more important now than ever,” Sally Elatta, founder of the fund’s project partner Sudan NextG, said in a statement.
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