Middle East and Africa’s technology industry saw a drop of 29.82% in deal activity during January 2021

Middle East and Africa’s technology industry saw a drop of 29.82% in deal activity during January 2021, when compared with the last 12-month average, led by $2.6bn acquisition of ION Acquisition1 Ltd and Taboola.Com, according to GlobalData’s deals database.

A total of 40 technology industry deals worth $3.12bn were announced for the region in January 2021, against the 12-month average of 57 deals.

Of all the deal types, venture financing saw most activity in January 2021 with 26 transactions, representing a 65% share for the region.

In second place was M&A with 12 deals, followed by private equity deals with two transactions, respectively capturing a 30% and 5% share of the overall deal activity for the month.

In terms of value of deals, M&A was the leading category in Middle East and Africa’s technology industry with $2.65bn, while venture financing and private equity deals totalled $328.64m and $137.57m, respectively.

Middle East and Africa technology industry deals in January 2021: Top deals

The top five technology deals accounted for 97.1% of the overall value during January 2021.

The combined value of the top five technology deals stood at $3.03bn, against the overall value of $3.12bn recorded for the month.

The top five technology industry deals of January 2021 tracked by GlobalData were:

1) The $2.6bn merger of ION Acquisition1 Ltd and Taboola.Com

2) The $208m venture financing deal with DriveNets by Atreides Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, D1 Capital Partners and Pitango Venture Capital

3) FIMI Opportunity Funds’ $137.57m private equity deal with E&M Computing

4) The $50m acquisition of Alcide.IO by Rapid7

5) Insight Partners, S Capital and TLV Partners’ venture financing of Run:AI for $30m.

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