Evelyn Chilomo Kaingu didn’t sugarcoat it
When Lupiya’s CEO and co-founder described closing the Zambian neobank’s $11.25 million Series A round, she didn’t use the language of effortless inevitability that typically populates startup funding announcements. Instead, she described a process that took nearly two years, involved multiple rejections, and required the founders to inject personal capital just to keep the lights on while negotiations inched forward.
“The process involved multiple rejections and required founders to inject personal capital to maintain operations while negotiating,” Kaingu acknowledged—a level of candor rarely seen in a press release, and more valuable for it.
Because here’s what that honesty reveals: Building a neobank in Zambia, led by a Black African woman, targeting populations that global investors historically haven’t understood, is genuinely hard. Not “startup hard.” Not “we pivoted twice and learned a lot” hard. Existentially hard.
Which makes the $11.25 million round—led by IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund, with participation from INOKS Capital and German development finance institution KfW DEG—more than just a funding announcement.
It’s proof that Zambia’s fintech moment has arrived. And a blueprint for how patient, impact-aligned capital can unlock ecosystems that pure-return investors won’t touch.
Born in a Community, Built for a Continent
Lupiya’s origin story is as far from Sand Hill Road as it gets.
In the heart of Ngombe Community in Zambia, seven years ago, a remarkable journey began with just K6,800 (roughly $350) and a group of determined women. That origin—rooted in microfinance for community women, not venture-scale ambition—shapes everything about how Lupiya operates today.
Founded in 2016, Lupiya operates as a digital-first financial services provider targeting Zambia’s unbanked and underbanked populations. The platform offers lending products alongside Lupiya Pay, its digital payments service, and is developing embedded finance partnerships.
The scale of the opportunity is stark. According to the World Bank, over 60% of Zambians are still unbanked or underbanked. That’s millions of people—farmers, traders, informal workers, women-led households—conducting their financial lives entirely outside the formal system, paying predatory rates to informal lenders, storing cash under mattresses, invisible to credit bureaus.
Lupiya’s thesis: Technology can reach these populations faster, cheaper, and more fairly than traditional banking infrastructure ever could.
The traction validates it. In 2022, the company processed over $200 million in transactions and grew its customer base by 200%, becoming one of the leading neobanks in Zambia with over one million customers.
One million customers in a country of 20 million people. That’s meaningful market penetration—and a signal that the model works.
The Deal: Who’s Backing Lupiya and Why
IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund (Lead Investor)
The lead investor is itself a story worth telling. The Alitheia IDF Fund is a private equity fund known for its gender-focused investments.
Polo Leteka, founder of South African-based financial service firm IDF Capital and co-managing partner of Alitheia IDF Fund, expressed her rationale: “We have always been on the lookout for startups that are at the cusp of making a significant impact in the financial sector of Africa. Lupiya’s vision and dedication to financial and gender inclusion resonates deeply with our own objectives.”
This isn’t charity dressed as investment. Gender-lens funds like Alitheia IDF operate on a specific thesis: companies with women in leadership and women as primary customers generate competitive returns because they’re serving underserved markets with genuine demand, not saturated ones with manufactured need.
Lupiya fits that thesis precisely. Women make up the majority of Zambia’s informal economy. They’re Lupiya’s core customers. And they’ve demonstrated repayment rates that shame the assumptions of traditional bank credit officers.
KfW DEG (German Development Finance)
KfW DEG’s participation signals something important: development finance institutions are increasingly comfortable backing fintechs, not just infrastructure. This reflects a broader shift in how DFIs think about financial inclusion—recognizing that digital lending platforms can move faster and reach further than branch networks.
KfW DEG’s involvement also de-risks the round for commercial co-investors. When a rigorous German development bank has done due diligence on a Zambian neobank, it provides implicit validation that the governance, compliance, and financial management meet international standards.
INOKS Capital
INOKS Capital is a Geneva-based alternative investment manager specializing in emerging markets commodity and trade finance. Their participation signals Lupiya’s growing sophistication—from microfinance roots to attracting institutional investors with specific emerging markets expertise.
The Broader Ecosystem of Support
Beyond the funding round, Lupiya’s institutional credibility is remarkable for a Zambian startup:
The neobank boasts an impressive roster of supporters including industry giants like Mastercard, Google, World Bank, and the UN International Trade Centre.
Vincent Malekani, Mastercard’s country director for Zambia and Malawi, said the collaboration supports the card network’s goal to bring one billion people into the digital economy. “Our collaboration with Lupiya stands as a testament to Mastercard’s commitment to fostering digital inclusion across Africa.”
Mastercard’s payment rails integration isn’t just endorsement—it’s infrastructure. Access to global payment networks dramatically expands what Lupiya can offer, from domestic transfers to cross-border remittances.
The company has also received acclaim from then-US Vice President Kamala Harris during her visit to Zambia, where she underscored the importance of capital infusion in empowering women economically.
Presidential-level recognition from the world’s most powerful economy doesn’t hurt in VC due diligence conversation.
What the Money Does: Three Strategic Priorities
The round will be used to strengthen the neobank’s technology infrastructure, expand its product range, and extend operations beyond Zambia into broader Southern and East African markets.
Priority 1: Technology Infrastructure
Lupiya has proven the model works at one million customers. Scaling to five or ten million requires backend systems, security infrastructure, and engineering talent that $350 in seed capital obviously couldn’t fund.
Specific technology investments likely include:
- Core banking system upgrades: Processing higher transaction volumes with lower latency
- AI/ML credit scoring: Moving beyond traditional microfinance underwriting to data-driven models
- Cybersecurity: As digital financial services scale, so do fraud and attack vectors
- API infrastructure: Building the embedded finance partnerships Lupiya is developing
Priority 2: Product Expansion
Lupiya currently offers lending products and Lupiya Pay for digital payments. The roadmap likely includes:
- Savings products: The natural complement to lending for financial inclusion
- Insurance: Micro-insurance for health, agriculture, and asset protection
- Investment products: Enabling wealth building, not just credit access
- Business banking: Serving the SMEs and traders that are Lupiya’s customers’ employers
Each product deepens the customer relationship, increases lifetime value, and creates switching costs that strengthen retention.
Priority 3: Regional Expansion
The company has not specified which markets it plans to enter or timelines for expansion, but Southern and East Africa represent the clear strategic corridor.
The Target Markets Logic:
Zimbabwe: Neighboring Zambia, severe financial system dysfunction, massive unbanked population, remittance-dependent economy
Malawi: Mastercard’s Malawi country director is already referenced—signals existing relationship and potential entry point
Tanzania: East Africa’s third-largest economy, rapidly growing mobile money ecosystem, natural expansion corridor
Mozambique: Significant unbanked population, Portuguese-speaking market where few anglophone fintechs compete
The strategy mirrors successful African fintech expansion playbooks: dominate one market, achieve operational profitability, use that cash flow and investor capital to enter adjacent markets with similar dynamics.
The Brutal Reality: Why It Took Two Years
Kaingu’s honesty about the fundraising process deserves deeper examination, because it reveals structural problems in how African startups—particularly those led by women, in smaller markets—access capital.
Why Two Years?
1. Zambia’s Smallness Is a Feature and a Bug
Zambia has 20 million people and a GDP of roughly $28 billion. For most global VCs optimizing for billion-dollar exits, the domestic market ceiling feels low. Lupiya’s pitch required investors to underwrite a regional story—expansion across Southern/East Africa—before that expansion had happened. That’s harder to sell.
2. Gender Bias in VC Is Real and Documented
Female-founded startups globally receive disproportionately less venture capital than male-founded ones—despite evidence of comparable or superior returns. In Africa, where the VC ecosystem is still maturing, that bias compounds. Finding investors like Alitheia IDF who specifically seek gender-lens opportunities took time.
3. DFI Processes Are Slow
KfW DEG and similar development finance institutions are rigorous, thorough, and methodical—which is good for governance. It’s also slow. DFI due diligence processes can take 12-18 months for a single investment decision. When you’re building a round around a DFI anchor, the timeline is set by their process.
4. Currency and Macro Risk Deter Commercial Investors
Zambia experienced significant economic challenges over the past five years, including a sovereign debt default in 2020 (since restructured) and kwacha volatility. Commercial investors pricing Zambia risk into their models demanded either higher returns or walked away. Patient capital—DFIs, gender-lens funds—was more willing to hold through volatility.
5. “Multiple Rejections” Were Part of the Process
Kaingu acknowledged the difficulties of raising capital as an African fintech, describing the process as involving “multiple rejections.”
This matters not just as biography but as industry signal. If Lupiya—with Mastercard partnership, World Bank support, Google backing, one million customers, and $200M+ in transaction volume—faced multiple rejections, what hope do earlier-stage African founders have with less traction and less institutional support?
The answer is: less. And the ecosystem needs to fix that.
The Zambia Context: Why This Market Matters
Zambia doesn’t get the press coverage of Nigeria, Kenya, or South Africa. It’s not on most VCs’ Africa expansion maps. That relative obscurity is itself the opportunity.
The Market Fundamentals:
- Population: 20 million (manageable scale for a startup)
- Financial exclusion: 55%+ unbanked or underbanked
- Mobile penetration: 50%+ smartphone penetration and rising
- Economic base: Copper mining, agriculture, growing services sector
- Regional position: Landlocked, surrounded by Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Angola—all high-financial-exclusion markets
The Competitive Landscape:
Traditional banks in Zambia serve the top 15-20% of the population—urban, formally employed, credit-history-bearing. The remaining 80% are either unserved or served by informal lenders charging 100%+ annual rates.
Mobile money penetration is growing but fragmented across telco-owned platforms (MTN MoMo, Airtel Money) that primarily serve payments, not credit.
Lupiya’s positioning—digital credit + payments + embedded finance—occupies a gap that telco wallets don’t fill and traditional banks won’t enter.
Why Regional Expansion Makes Strategic Sense:
Zambia alone probably can’t support a unicorn-scale fintech outcome. But Zambia + Zimbabwe + Malawi + Tanzania + Mozambique—a Southern/East African corridor of 100 million+ people with similar financial exclusion dynamics—absolutely can.
Lupiya’s regional expansion isn’t optional. It’s existential.
The Competitive Landscape: Who Lupiya Is Racing Against
Direct Competitors (Zambia):
- Zazu: Zambian neobank, similar positioning
- Mukuru: Remittance platform expanding into broader financial services
- Branch International: Pan-African digital lender with Zambia presence
Regional Competitors (Entering Lupiya’s Target Markets):
- M-KOPA: East Africa asset finance giant now expanding south
- Tala: Digital lending across Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines
- FairMoney: West Africa-focused but watching Southern Africa
Lupiya’s Competitive Advantages:
- Local roots: Built by Zambians, for Zambians, with deep community trust
- Gender-lens positioning: Intentional focus on women borrowers creates loyal, disciplined customer base
- Institutional backing: Mastercard rails, World Bank credibility, KfW DEG governance
- First-mover in underserved corridor: Less competition in Southern Africa than East/West
The Risk: As Southern Africa becomes more attractive to regional fintechs, competition intensifies. Lupiya’s window to establish dominance is open, but won’t be forever.
The Gender-Lens Angle: Why It’s Strategy, Not Charity
The Alitheia IDF Fund’s gender-lens focus deserves explicit attention, because it’s often misunderstood as impact-first and returns-second.
The evidence says otherwise.
Why Women Borrowers Generate Better Returns:
- Higher repayment rates (documented across microfinance globally)
- Higher likelihood to reinvest in family/community (driving economic multipliers)
- More risk-averse borrowing behavior (smaller loans, fewer defaults)
- Brand loyalty when treated fairly by financial institutions
Lupiya’s roots—K6,800 among women in Ngombe Community—created a foundation of women borrowers who form the core of its portfolio. That portfolio’s performance is what attracted Alitheia IDF, not the other way around.
Sarah Dusek, a partner at Enygma Ventures, one of Lupiya’s early backers, said: “It’s remarkable to witness Lupiya’s growth, especially given our initial investment of $1 million during the peak of the pandemic. We have always believed in the resilience and potential of this team. Their vision to transform financial inclusion in Zambia, even amidst global challenges, aligns perfectly with Enygma’s mission.”
$1 million invested at pandemic peak, growing to an $11.25 million Series A round three years later—that’s a meaningful return trajectory for a patient impact investor.
What Success Looks Like: The 2028 Scenario
If Lupiya deploys this capital effectively, here’s the picture in two years:
Operational Metrics:
- 3-5 million customers (across Zambia + 2-3 new markets)
- $500M+ in annual transaction volume
- Break-even or profitable on unit economics
- Product suite expanded to savings, insurance, SME banking
Market Position:
- Dominant neobank in Zambia
- Top-3 digital lender in at least two additional markets
- Recognized regional brand with cross-border Mastercard-powered payments
Funding Path:
- Series B ($25-40M) within 18-24 months
- DFI co-investors potentially joined by commercial VCs as track record strengthens
- IPO consideration (EGX, JSE, NSE) as ecosystem matures
Impact Metrics:
- 2M+ women borrowers with formal credit history
- $1B+ in cumulative credit disbursed to unbanked populations
- Measurable reduction in informal lending dependency
The Bottom Line: Small Country, Big Signal
Lupiya’s $11.25 million Series A is not the largest African fintech round of 2026. It’s not even the largest this month. But it might be the most instructive.
It proves:
- Patient capital can unlock ecosystems that pure-return investors ignore
- Gender-lens investing is commercially viable, not just morally admirable
- Zambia—and markets like it—have real fintech opportunities, not just theoretical ones
- Candor about fundraising difficulty is more valuable than manufactured inevitability
It demonstrates:
- Two years and multiple rejections is the cost of building in underserved markets
- Institutional validation (Mastercard, World Bank, Google) matters enormously in frontier market fundraising
- Development finance institutions (KfW DEG) are critical architecture in rounds that commercial capital won’t lead
- Female founders building for female customers in African markets can deliver real returns
It challenges:
The idea that “smaller markets” aren’t worth serious investment attention
The VC industry’s geographic bias toward Nigeria/Kenya/South Africa
The assumption that gender-lens investing sacrifices returns
The narrative that African fintech exits require Silicon Valley backing
The idea that “smaller markets” aren’t worth serious investment attention
Lupiya Closes $11.25M Series A After Two Years and “Multiple Rejections”—Here’s Why That Matters for African Fintech
SEO Keyphrase: Lupiya Zambia $11.25 million Series A funding digital banking
Evelyn Chilomo Kaingu didn’t sugarcoat it.
When Lupiya’s CEO and co-founder described closing the Zambian neobank’s $11.25 million Series A round, she didn’t use the language of effortless inevitability that typically populates startup funding announcements. Instead, she described a process that took nearly two years, involved multiple rejections, and required the founders to inject personal capital just to keep the lights on while negotiations inched forward.
“The process involved multiple rejections and required founders to inject personal capital to maintain operations while negotiating,” Kaingu acknowledged—a level of candor rarely seen in a press release, and more valuable for it.
Because here’s what that honesty reveals: Building a neobank in Zambia, led by a Black African woman, targeting populations that global investors historically haven’t understood, is genuinely hard. Not “startup hard.” Not “we pivoted twice and learned a lot” hard. Existentially hard.
Which makes the $11.25 million round—led by IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund, with participation from INOKS Capital and German development finance institution KfW DEG—more than just a funding announcement.
It’s proof that Zambia’s fintech moment has arrived. And a blueprint for how patient, impact-aligned capital can unlock ecosystems that pure-return investors won’t touch.
Born in a Community, Built for a Continent
Lupiya’s origin story is as far from Sand Hill Road as it gets.
In the heart of Ngombe Community in Zambia, seven years ago, a remarkable journey began with just K6,800 (roughly $350) and a group of determined women. That origin—rooted in microfinance for community women, not venture-scale ambition—shapes everything about how Lupiya operates today.
Founded in 2016, Lupiya operates as a digital-first financial services provider targeting Zambia’s unbanked and underbanked populations. The platform offers lending products alongside Lupiya Pay, its digital payments service, and is developing embedded finance partnerships.
The scale of the opportunity is stark. According to the World Bank, over 60% of Zambians are still unbanked or underbanked. That’s millions of people—farmers, traders, informal workers, women-led households—conducting their financial lives entirely outside the formal system, paying predatory rates to informal lenders, storing cash under mattresses, invisible to credit bureaus.
Lupiya’s thesis: Technology can reach these populations faster, cheaper, and more fairly than traditional banking infrastructure ever could.
The traction validates it. In 2022, the company processed over $200 million in transactions and grew its customer base by 200%, becoming one of the leading neobanks in Zambia with over one million customers.
One million customers in a country of 20 million people. That’s meaningful market penetration—and a signal that the model works.
The Deal: Who’s Backing Lupiya and Why
IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund (Lead Investor)
The lead investor is itself a story worth telling. The Alitheia IDF Fund is a private equity fund known for its gender-focused investments.
Polo Leteka, founder of South African-based financial service firm IDF Capital and co-managing partner of Alitheia IDF Fund, expressed her rationale: “We have always been on the lookout for startups that are at the cusp of making a significant impact in the financial sector of Africa. Lupiya’s vision and dedication to financial and gender inclusion resonates deeply with our own objectives.”
This isn’t charity dressed as investment. Gender-lens funds like Alitheia IDF operate on a specific thesis: companies with women in leadership and women as primary customers generate competitive returns because they’re serving underserved markets with genuine demand, not saturated ones with manufactured need.
Lupiya fits that thesis precisely. Women make up the majority of Zambia’s informal economy. They’re Lupiya’s core customers. And they’ve demonstrated repayment rates that shame the assumptions of traditional bank credit officers.
KfW DEG (German Development Finance)
KfW DEG’s participation signals something important: development finance institutions are increasingly comfortable backing fintechs, not just infrastructure. This reflects a broader shift in how DFIs think about financial inclusion—recognizing that digital lending platforms can move faster and reach further than branch networks.
KfW DEG’s involvement also de-risks the round for commercial co-investors. When a rigorous German development bank has done due diligence on a Zambian neobank, it provides implicit validation that the governance, compliance, and financial management meet international standards.
INOKS Capital
INOKS Capital is a Geneva-based alternative investment manager specializing in emerging markets commodity and trade finance. Their participation signals Lupiya’s growing sophistication—from microfinance roots to attracting institutional investors with specific emerging markets expertise.
The Broader Ecosystem of Support
Beyond the funding round, Lupiya’s institutional credibility is remarkable for a Zambian startup:
The neobank boasts an impressive roster of supporters including industry giants like Mastercard, Google, World Bank, and the UN International Trade Centre.
Vincent Malekani, Mastercard’s country director for Zambia and Malawi, said the collaboration supports the card network’s goal to bring one billion people into the digital economy. “Our collaboration with Lupiya stands as a testament to Mastercard’s commitment to fostering digital inclusion across Africa.”
Mastercard’s payment rails integration isn’t just endorsement—it’s infrastructure. Access to global payment networks dramatically expands what Lupiya can offer, from domestic transfers to cross-border remittances.
The company has also received acclaim from then-US Vice President Kamala Harris during her visit to Zambia, where she underscored the importance of capital infusion in empowering women economically.
Presidential-level recognition from the world’s most powerful economy doesn’t hurt in VC due diligence conversations.
What the Money Does: Three Strategic Priorities
The round will be used to strengthen the neobank’s technology infrastructure, expand its product range, and extend operations beyond Zambia into broader Southern and East African markets.
Priority 1: Technology Infrastructure
Lupiya has proven the model works at one million customers. Scaling to five or ten million requires backend systems, security infrastructure, and engineering talent that $350 in seed capital obviously couldn’t fund.
Specific technology investments likely include:
- Core banking system upgrades: Processing higher transaction volumes with lower latency
- AI/ML credit scoring: Moving beyond traditional microfinance underwriting to data-driven models
- Cybersecurity: As digital financial services scale, so do fraud and attack vectors
- API infrastructure: Building the embedded finance partnerships Lupiya is developing
Priority 2: Product Expansion
Lupiya currently offers lending products and Lupiya Pay for digital payments. The roadmap likely includes:
- Savings products: The natural complement to lending for financial inclusion
- Insurance: Micro-insurance for health, agriculture, and asset protection
- Investment products: Enabling wealth building, not just credit access
- Business banking: Serving the SMEs and traders that are Lupiya’s customers’ employers
Each product deepens the customer relationship, increases lifetime value, and creates switching costs that strengthen retention.
Priority 3: Regional Expansion
The company has not specified which markets it plans to enter or timelines for expansion, but Southern and East Africa represent the clear strategic corridor.
The Target Markets Logic:
Zimbabwe: Neighboring Zambia, severe financial system dysfunction, massive unbanked population, remittance-dependent economy
Malawi: Mastercard’s Malawi country director is already referenced—signals existing relationship and potential entry point
Tanzania: East Africa’s third-largest economy, rapidly growing mobile money ecosystem, natural expansion corridor
Mozambique: Significant unbanked population, Portuguese-speaking market where few anglophone fintechs compete
The strategy mirrors successful African fintech expansion playbooks: dominate one market, achieve operational profitability, use that cash flow and investor capital to enter adjacent markets with similar dynamics.
The Brutal Reality: Why It Took Two Years
Kaingu’s honesty about the fundraising process deserves deeper examination, because it reveals structural problems in how African startups—particularly those led by women, in smaller markets—access capital.
Why Two Years?
1. Zambia’s Smallness Is a Feature and a Bug
Zambia has 20 million people and a GDP of roughly $28 billion. For most global VCs optimizing for billion-dollar exits, the domestic market ceiling feels low. Lupiya’s pitch required investors to underwrite a regional story—expansion across Southern/East Africa—before that expansion had happened. That’s harder to sell.
2. Gender Bias in VC Is Real and Documented
Female-founded startups globally receive disproportionately less venture capital than male-founded ones—despite evidence of comparable or superior returns. In Africa, where the VC ecosystem is still maturing, that bias compounds. Finding investors like Alitheia IDF who specifically seek gender-lens opportunities took time.
3. DFI Processes Are Slow
KfW DEG and similar development finance institutions are rigorous, thorough, and methodical—which is good for governance. It’s also slow. DFI due diligence processes can take 12-18 months for a single investment decision. When you’re building a round around a DFI anchor, the timeline is set by their process.
4. Currency and Macro Risk Deter Commercial Investors
Zambia experienced significant economic challenges over the past five years, including a sovereign debt default in 2020 (since restructured) and kwacha volatility. Commercial investors pricing Zambia risk into their models demanded either higher returns or walked away. Patient capital—DFIs, gender-lens funds—was more willing to hold through volatility.
5. “Multiple Rejections” Were Part of the Process
Kaingu acknowledged the difficulties of raising capital as an African fintech, describing the process as involving “multiple rejections.”
This matters not just as biography but as industry signal. If Lupiya—with Mastercard partnership, World Bank support, Google backing, one million customers, and $200M+ in transaction volume—faced multiple rejections, what hope do earlier-stage African founders have with less traction and less institutional support?
The answer is: less. And the ecosystem needs to fix that.
The Zambia Context: Why This Market Matters
Zambia doesn’t get the press coverage of Nigeria, Kenya, or South Africa. It’s not on most VCs’ Africa expansion maps. That relative obscurity is itself the opportunity.
The Market Fundamentals:
- Population: 20 million (manageable scale for a startup)
- Financial exclusion: 55%+ unbanked or underbanked
- Mobile penetration: 50%+ smartphone penetration and rising
- Economic base: Copper mining, agriculture, growing services sector
- Regional position: Landlocked, surrounded by Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Angola—all high-financial-exclusion markets
The Competitive Landscape:
Traditional banks in Zambia serve the top 15-20% of the population—urban, formally employed, credit-history-bearing. The remaining 80% are either unserved or served by informal lenders charging 100%+ annual rates.
Mobile money penetration is growing but fragmented across telco-owned platforms (MTN MoMo, Airtel Money) that primarily serve payments, not credit.
Lupiya’s positioning—digital credit + payments + embedded finance—occupies a gap that telco wallets don’t fill and traditional banks won’t enter.
Why Regional Expansion Makes Strategic Sense:
Zambia alone probably can’t support a unicorn-scale fintech outcome. But Zambia + Zimbabwe + Malawi + Tanzania + Mozambique—a Southern/East African corridor of 100 million+ people with similar financial exclusion dynamics—absolutely can.
Lupiya’s regional expansion isn’t optional. It’s existential.
The Competitive Landscape: Who Lupiya Is Racing Against
Direct Competitors (Zambia):
- Zazu: Zambian neobank, similar positioning
- Mukuru: Remittance platform expanding into broader financial services
- Branch International: Pan-African digital lender with Zambia presence
Regional Competitors (Entering Lupiya’s Target Markets):
- M-KOPA: East Africa asset finance giant now expanding south
- Tala: Digital lending across Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines
- FairMoney: West Africa-focused but watching Southern Africa
Lupiya’s Competitive Advantages:
- Local roots: Built by Zambians, for Zambians, with deep community trust
- Gender-lens positioning: Intentional focus on women borrowers creates loyal, disciplined customer base
- Institutional backing: Mastercard rails, World Bank credibility, KfW DEG governance
- First-mover in underserved corridor: Less competition in Southern Africa than East/West
The Risk: As Southern Africa becomes more attractive to regional fintechs, competition intensifies. Lupiya’s window to establish dominance is open, but won’t be forever.
The Gender-Lens Angle: Why It’s Strategy, Not Charity
The Alitheia IDF Fund’s gender-lens focus deserves explicit attention, because it’s often misunderstood as impact-first and returns-second.
The evidence says otherwise.
Why Women Borrowers Generate Better Returns:
- Higher repayment rates (documented across microfinance globally)
- Higher likelihood to reinvest in family/community (driving economic multipliers)
- More risk-averse borrowing behavior (smaller loans, fewer defaults)
- Brand loyalty when treated fairly by financial institutions
Lupiya’s roots—K6,800 among women in Ngombe Community—created a foundation of women borrowers who form the core of its portfolio. That portfolio’s performance is what attracted Alitheia IDF, not the other way around.
Sarah Dusek, a partner at Enygma Ventures, one of Lupiya’s early backers, said: “It’s remarkable to witness Lupiya’s growth, especially given our initial investment of $1 million during the peak of the pandemic. We have always believed in the resilience and potential of this team. Their vision to transform financial inclusion in Zambia, even amidst global challenges, aligns perfectly with Enygma’s mission.”
$1 million invested at pandemic peak, growing to an $11.25 million Series A round three years later—that’s a meaningful return trajectory for a patient impact investor.
What Success Looks Like: The 2028 Scenario
If Lupiya deploys this capital effectively, here’s the picture in two years:
Operational Metrics:
- 3-5 million customers (across Zambia + 2-3 new markets)
- $500M+ in annual transaction volume
- Break-even or profitable on unit economics
- Product suite expanded to savings, insurance, SME banking
Market Position:
- Dominant neobank in Zambia
- Top-3 digital lender in at least two additional markets
- Recognized regional brand with cross-border Mastercard-powered payments
Funding Path:
- Series B ($25-40M) within 18-24 months
- DFI co-investors potentially joined by commercial VCs as track record strengthens
- IPO consideration (EGX, JSE, NSE) as ecosystem matures
Impact Metrics:
- 2M+ women borrowers with formal credit history
- $1B+ in cumulative credit disbursed to unbanked populations
- Measurable reduction in informal lending dependency
The Bottom Line: Small Country, Big Signal
Lupiya’s $11.25 million Series A is not the largest African fintech round of 2026. It’s not even the largest this month. But it might be the most instructive.
It proves:
- Patient capital can unlock ecosystems that pure-return investors ignore
- Gender-lens investing is commercially viable, not just morally admirable
- Zambia—and markets like it—have real fintech opportunities, not just theoretical ones
- Candor about fundraising difficulty is more valuable than manufactured inevitability
It demonstrates:
- Two years and multiple rejections is the cost of building in underserved markets
- Institutional validation (Mastercard, World Bank, Google) matters enormously in frontier market fundraising
- Development finance institutions (KfW DEG) are critical architecture in rounds that commercial capital won’t lead
- Female founders building for female customers in African markets can deliver real returns
It challenges:
- The VC industry’s geographic bias toward Nigeria/Kenya/South Africa
- The assumption that gender-lens investing sacrifices returns
- The narrative that African fintech exits require Silicon Valley backing
- The idea that “smaller markets” aren’t worth serious investment attention
Evelyn Chilomo Kaingu started with K6,800 and a group of determined women in Ngombe Community. After a decade of building, two years of pitching, multiple rejections, personal capital injections, and an eventual $11.25 million vote of confidence from institutional investors—she’s ready to take Lupiya regional.
The rejections made the story richer. The patience made the outcome more durable. And the honesty about how hard it was makes the achievement more meaningful.
In a startup ecosystem full of overnight success mythology, Lupiya’s truth-telling is as valuable as its term sheet.
