In a move that signals both opportunity and validation for Africa’s embattled tech sector, Singapore-based global insurtech bolttech has acquired mTek, a Kenyan digital insurance platform, for an undisclosed amount. The deal, announced Thursday, marks one of the few confirmed exits in East Africa’s startup ecosystem over the past two years—a period characterized by what industry insiders have dubbed a “funding winter.”
For bolttech, which operates across more than 30 markets globally and generates over $2 billion in annual revenue, the acquisition provides immediate access to East Africa’s burgeoning insurance market through established telco partnerships and mobile money integrations that would take years to build independently. For mTek’s founders and investors, it represents a strategic exit at a time when liquidity events remain exceedingly rare on the continent.
A Strategic Fit For Global Expansion
Founded in 2019 by CEO Bente Krogmann and Christopher Osore, mTek has positioned itself as a digital-first insurance distribution platform leveraging Kenya’s advanced mobile money infrastructure. The company’s strategic partnerships with Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Airtel Money, and other telco operators have enabled it to reach millions of potential customers who remain underserved by traditional insurance channels.
“What mTek has built is precisely what global insurtech players need but struggle to replicate in African markets,” says Dr. Aly-Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based financial analyst and CEO of Rich Management. “The regulatory licenses, telco relationships, and trust capital they’ve accumulated over six years would cost tens of millions and years of effort to reproduce.”
Bolttech, backed by Hong Kong-based Activant Capital and operating in markets spanning Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America, has been notably absent from Africa despite the continent’s massive insurance protection gap. Industry data shows that fewer than 3% of sub-Saharan Africans hold any form of insurance coverage, despite the region’s vulnerability to climate shocks, health crises, and economic volatility.
The acquisition suggests that rather than building African operations from scratch—a strategy fraught with regulatory complexity and cultural nuance—global insurtech firms may increasingly pursue strategic acquisitions of established local players.
The Economics Of Exit In African Tech
While financial terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, the deal provides a definitive exit for mTek’s cap table, which includes Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, Founders Factory Africa, and Finclusion Group. This liquidity event arrives at a particularly opportune moment for African venture capital, which has faced severe headwinds.
According to data from Africa: The Big Deal, African tech funding declined 31% year-over-year in 2024, with total capital raised falling from $3.5 billion in 2023 to approximately $2.4 billion. More concerning for the ecosystem’s sustainability, exits—whether through acquisitions, secondary sales, or IPOs—have become increasingly scarce.
Between 2010 and 2023, the African tech ecosystem recorded just 78 notable exits despite more than 2,000 funding rounds during the same period. This stark imbalance creates a fundamental challenge: without liquidity events, early-stage investors cannot return capital to limited partners, making it progressively more difficult to raise subsequent funds.
“The mTek acquisition is significant not just for the founders and investors involved, but for the broader ecosystem’s credibility,” notes Maya Horgan Famodu, founder and managing partner of Ingressive Capital, a Lagos-based venture firm. “Every successful exit validates the thesis that African tech companies can deliver returns, which is critical for attracting the next wave of institutional capital.”
mTek’s Journey: From Founding To Exit
mTek’s path to acquisition reflects both strategic execution and favorable timing. The company raised $3 million in combined debt and equity financing in 2022, followed by a $1.25 million round in 2024 specifically earmarked for East African expansion. The relatively modest capital requirements—particularly when compared to the capital-intensive trajectories of fintech or logistics startups—made the business more attractive to potential acquirers concerned about post-acquisition integration costs.
The startup’s business model centers on embedded insurance—selling coverage through platforms and partners that customers already use and trust, rather than requiring them to download yet another app or visit a physical branch. This approach has proven particularly effective in African markets, where smartphone penetration remains below 50% in many countries and trust in unfamiliar financial institutions is limited.
By integrating with M-Pesa, which processes nearly 50% of Kenya’s GDP through its platform, and partnering with Airtel Money and other operators, mTek effectively accessed a customer base of tens of millions without the prohibitive customer acquisition costs that typically plague direct-to-consumer insurance models.
“Embedded insurance is the future, and mTek recognized this early,” says Ted Pantone, CEO of Turaco, another East African insurtech that has scaled to over 1 million customers across four markets. “Rather than competing with incumbents on product, they won on distribution—which in African markets often matters more than innovation.”
The Insurtech Opportunity In Africa
The acquisition occurs against a backdrop of growing recognition that insurtech represents one of Africa’s most significant untapped opportunities. Despite decades of insurance industry presence on the continent, penetration rates remain stubbornly low—averaging 2.8% of GDP across sub-Saharan Africa compared to a global average of 7.0% and developed market rates exceeding 10%.
This protection gap has become increasingly untenable as climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of droughts, floods, and extreme weather events. According to Swiss Re Institute, approximately 80% of economic losses from natural disasters in Africa during 2022 were uninsured—a sharp increase from 58% in 2021. For households and small businesses operating with minimal financial buffers, uninsured catastrophic losses can mean permanent exit from the formal economy.
“The human cost of underinsurance is staggering,” notes Dr. Reginald Oduor, an economist at the University of Nairobi. “Kenyan households spend approximately 14% of their income on healthcare out-of-pocket, and a single hospitalization can push a family into poverty. The same dynamics apply to agricultural losses, property damage, and business interruption. Insurance isn’t a luxury—it’s infrastructure.”
Several factors have converged to make insurtech viable in ways that traditional insurance never achieved:
Mobile Money Ubiquity: With over 400 million registered mobile money accounts across Africa and transaction values exceeding $700 billion annually, the payment infrastructure for micropremiums now exists at scale.
Regulatory Evolution: Countries including Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Rwanda have introduced microinsurance and sandbox licenses that reduce capital requirements and regulatory friction for digital-first insurers.
Data Availability: The proliferation of smartphones and digital transactions has created vast datasets enabling more sophisticated risk assessment and pricing—particularly important for previously “uninsurable” segments.
Climate Urgency: As extreme weather becomes more frequent, both governments and international development institutions are prioritizing disaster risk financing mechanisms, creating procurement opportunities for insurtech platforms.
Global Interest In African Infrastructure
The bolttech-mTek deal represents a broader trend: global tech companies increasingly viewing African startups not as competitors to be feared or copied, but as infrastructure to be acquired.
Similar dynamics have played out in fintech, where Visa acquired Nigerian payment processor Paystack for $200 million in 2020, and e-commerce, where South Africa’s Takealot was acquired by Naspers. In each case, the acquiring company gained immediate access to complex, relationship-driven markets where building from scratch would be prohibitively expensive or time-consuming.
“There’s a maturation happening in how global tech views Africa,” observes Kola Aina, general partner at Ventures Platform, a Lagos-based VC firm. “Ten years ago, the assumption was that Western business models could simply be copy-pasted to African markets. Now there’s recognition that local nuance, regulatory relationships, and distribution infrastructure have real value—and it’s often cheaper to buy than build.”
For African founders, this creates a new strategic calculus. Rather than aspiring exclusively to build standalone billion-dollar companies—a challenging proposition given limited late-stage capital and nascent public markets—some entrepreneurs may optimize for strategic acquisition by global players seeking regional footholds.
Challenges And Questions Ahead
Despite the positive narrative around mTek’s exit, significant questions remain about the transaction’s long-term implications.
Integration Risk: Bolttech’s track record of integrating acquired companies into its global operations will be tested. African markets require localized approaches, and heavy-handed centralization from Singapore could alienate customers, partners, and regulators.
Brand Continuity: Will bolttech maintain the mTek brand, which carries trust capital in Kenya, or rebrand operations under its global identity? The choice could determine whether existing partnerships and customer relationships survive the transition.
Team Retention: Acquisitions often result in founder and key employee departures within 12-24 months. If Krogmann, Osore, and their team exit, bolttech may find itself owning infrastructure without the institutional knowledge to operate it effectively.
Market Precedent: Does this deal validate the “build to flip” model, encouraging African founders to optimize for acquisition rather than long-term independence? While exits provide liquidity, over-reliance on foreign acquirers could limit the emergence of homegrown African tech giants.
“There’s a tension here,” notes Omobola Johnson, former Nigerian Minister of Communication Technology and current senior partner at TLcom Capital. “We celebrate exits because they’re rare and provide returns. But we should also ask: why aren’t we seeing more African companies achieving scale independently? Why do so many need to sell to Singapore, Amsterdam, or Silicon Valley?”
Implications For The Ecosystem
For Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, Founders Factory Africa, and Finclusion Group, the mTek exit delivers crucial portfolio returns during a period when African VC funds are under intense scrutiny from limited partners. Many Africa-focused funds raised between 2019-2021 are now reaching the midpoint of their investment periods with limited distributions to show for deployed capital.
“One exit doesn’t solve the broader ecosystem challenges, but it absolutely helps,” says an LP in multiple Africa-focused funds who requested anonymity. “We need to see consistent, repeatable paths to liquidity—whether through strategic acquisitions, secondaries, or eventually public listings. mTek contributes to that proof point.”
The acquisition may also influence how other global insurtech firms approach Africa. Companies including Lemonade, Root Insurance, and Next Insurance have thus far avoided the continent despite its obvious market opportunity. If bolttech’s integration proves successful and delivers strong ROI, competitors may accelerate their own acquisition strategies rather than risk ceding first-mover advantage.
Looking Forward
As African tech enters what many describe as a “maturation phase”—characterized by fewer but larger funding rounds, greater emphasis on profitability, and increased scrutiny of business fundamentals—strategic acquisitions by global players may become more common.
For founders, this represents both opportunity and caution. The opportunity lies in building businesses optimized for strategic value—distribution infrastructure, regulatory moats, and partnership ecosystems that global companies will pay premiums to acquire. The caution involves ensuring that in optimizing for exit, the broader ecosystem’s goal of building enduring African tech champions isn’t compromised.
“The ultimate success metric isn’t just exits—it’s building companies that last,” reflects Bankole Oluwafemi, co-founder of Ventures Platform Fund. “But in the current environment, where Series B and C rounds are nearly impossible to raise, taking strategic exits that return capital to investors and founders makes rational sense. It’s a bridge to the next phase.”
For now, mTek’s founders can celebrate a hard-won outcome in challenging market conditions. Whether this deal represents a one-off opportunistic acquisition or the beginning of a more robust M&A market for African tech remains to be seen. But for an ecosystem starved of liquidity events, any exit is a step forward.
