North African Proptech Draws Deeper Interest From World Bank’s Private-Sector Arm

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector investment arm, is moving to deepen its exposure to North Africa’s proptech sector by weighing an equity investment in Egyptian platform Nawy Inc, and by building on an existing position in Moroccan start-up Yakeey. Nawy, founded in 2016, says it serves more than 1 million unique monthly users, supports roughly 1,000 active micro, small and medium-sized brokers, and has facilitated over 60,000 property searches and $1.4 billion in cumulative transaction volume by the end of 2024.

"Digitalising the value chain," household financing and job creation, the IFC has framed its interest in platforms that digitise property transactions as a way to widen access to housing finance and formalise informal brokerage networks that dominate real estate dealing across the region.

The potential equity move into Nawy would complement the IFC’s earlier entry to Morocco’s proptech space: the corporation participated in Yakeey’s $15 million Series A — the largest such round in the kingdom — a transaction led by pan-African investor Enza Capital and joined by Egypt’s Beltone Venture Capital and Morocco’s state-backed CDG Invest. That deal marked the IFC’s first venture capital investment in Morocco, signalling institutional appetite for proptech solutions across North Africa.

Nawy operates as a full-stack proptech with two core businesses — Nawy Properties, a multi-listing service for residential and commercial property, and Nawy Partners, a platform that gives third-party brokers access to listings and tools — and several layered verticals. Those additional services include:

• Nawy Now — an on-balance-sheet mortgage originator that offloads loans to banks through securitisation;
• Nawy Shares — a fractional-ownership platform aimed at broadening access to property investment;
• Nawy Unlocked — a renovation-financing service for idle or unfurnished rental units, acquired from startup ROA in late 2024.

The company has reported dramatic growth: cumulative transaction volume rose from $38 million in 2020 to $1.4 billion by the end of 2024. Nawy completed a large financing package last year totalling $75 million, split between $52 million in equity led by Partech Africa and $23 million in debt from local banks. Management has said the capital will support expansion into Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and development of artificial-intelligence-based services.

For investors such as the IFC, the attraction is twofold: platforms that digitise listings, brokerage and financing can expand formal access to housing credit while bringing informal brokerage activity into regulated, trackable channels. Nawy’s mix of listing services, broker enablement and mortgage origination positions it as a vertically integrated play that could scale across adjacent markets.

Outlook: If the IFC proceeds with an equity investment in Nawy, it would deepen multilateral support for North African proptech and validate a model that combines marketplace listings with financing and asset-improvement services. Such backing could accelerate Nawy’s stated plans to enter Morocco and the Gulf and to roll out AI-driven products, while reinforcing a broader push to formalise fragmented property markets and extend housing finance across the region.