CAIRO: Funding for startups in the Middle East and North Africa ended 2022 on a disappointing note despite the total amount raised in the year up on the previous 12 months, according to MENA entrepreneurship platform Wamda. Burgeoning firms secured $125 million in December across 38 deals – meaning funding was down 40 percent compared to the same month the previous year, as well as a 72 percent decrease on a monthly basis. However, the total investment throughout 2022 stood at $3.6 billion, up 13 percent compared to 2021 and spread across 628 deals. In December, Egypt was the leading country in terms of funding raised with $45.7 million, followed by the UAE with $31.7 million and Saudi Arabia with $31.6 million. Regarding deal count in the final month of the year, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian startups both shared the top rank with 11 deals each, followed by the UAE with 10. Saudi-based investors were the most active during December, participating in 31 deals while foreign investors were involved in 22 deals, mostly coming from the US. Mergers and acquisitions were high during the month with six deals across the fintech, health-tech, e-commerce, prop-tech and food-tech sectors. These transactions included UAE’s fintech platform Galaxy acquiring Egypt’s fintech Underlie, Saudi Arabia’s grocery startup Jumlaty merging with Egyptian counterpart Appetito and Saudi-based fintech PayTabs acquiring Turkish social commerce platform Paymes. In terms of sectors, agritech startups secured the most funding with $38 million followed by fintech, HR, and foodtech raising a combined amount of $79.5 million while foodtech alone was the top sector in terms of deal count with 10 deals. The gender-funding gap persisted during the month with 98 percent of deals targeting male-led startups, 0.9 percent to female founders, and 1.1 percent to mixed-gender startups. Funding in November 2022 hit $439 million across 39 deals, with the UAE-based startups securing $237 million followed by Algeria with $150 million and Egypt with $41.6 million. In November, US-based investors were the primary source of foreign investments with eight deals while Saudi-based investors were the most active in the region participating in 10 deals.