Q3 2023: The Driest Ground
The African growth capital quarter in review — funding flows, instruments, and what it meant for founders and investors, from the Caban research desk.
1. The cycle's floor forms
Q3 2023 sat in the deepest stretch of the funding winter — bridge rounds, insider rounds, and quiet shutdowns defined the quarter more than announcements did.
2. Survival cohort economics
Companies that had cut burn in 2022 crossed this quarter intact; those that hadn't became the winter's casualty statistics.
3. Seed keeps moving
Notably, early-stage cheques never stopped — the correction was a later-stage phenomenon, and the seed cohort planted here would harvest into the 2025 recovery.
Reading this as a founder? The through-line of every quarter since 2022 is that preparation, not timing, decides who raises. See how investors would read your business today. As an investor? Our pipeline is built on exactly these dynamics.