Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret it.
Novitske moved to Nigeria in 2012 and has invested from Lagos ever since. Norrsken22, a pan-African growth fund backed by Nordic tech founders including those behind Klarna, Skype and Minecraft, closed its debut fund at US$205-million in 2023. It is now about halfway through deploying that capital, with no exits yet.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show, she expands on the argument TechCentral reported last week: that African start-ups are increasingly building on Chinese AI models such as Alibaba’s Qwen because they are cheaper and more available, and that the US risks losing both a young, digital-first market and access to its data.
In the interview, with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, Novitske also discusses:
• How Nigeria’s start-up scene has changed since she began as an angel investor;
• Why unpredictable regulation and a shortage of top talent are bigger obstacles for Nigerian founders than power cuts;
• How Chinese-backed OPay and PalmPay won Nigerian fintech by absorbing years of losses, and why that now makes regulators uneasy;
• Why Silicon Valley’s AI boom has drawn venture capital away from Africa, and when she expects it to return;
• Why Egypt and South Africa offer the best opportunities right now, with Nigeria likely to follow; and
• What Optasia’s oversubscribed JSE listing means for Johannesburg, why the biggest African fintechs are looking to New York, London and Hong Kong instead, and why one or two winners can return an entire fund.
Don’t miss the discussion!