The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private-sector investment arm, is expanding its exposure to North Africa’s property technology sector, backing companies that are attempting to digitise fragmented and often opaque real estate markets in Egypt and Morocco.
The IFC is considering an equity investment in Nawy Inc, an Egyptian proptech platform founded in 2016 that connects buyers, sellers, developers, brokers and investors across the real estate value chain, according to information reviewed by Launch Base Africa. Nawy says it serves more than 1m unique monthly users and supports roughly 1,000 active micro, small and medium-sized brokers.
The potential Nawy investment would add to an existing IFC position in Yakeey, a Moroccan proptech start-up that closed a $15m Series A round, the largest of its kind in the kingdom. That transaction marked the IFC’s first venture capital investment in Morocco and was led by pan-African investor Enza Capital, alongside Beltone Venture Capital of Egypt and Morocco’s state-backed CDG Invest.
The IFC’s growing footprint in the sector reflects a broader institutional view that digitising property transactions can widen access to housing finance and formalise informal brokerage networks that dominate real estate dealing across the region. The corporation has described its interest in such platforms in terms of “digitalising the value chain,” household financing and job creation, though it has not detailed the scale or terms of any prospective investment in Nawy.
A full-stack platform
Nawy operates 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 supporting tools. It has layered three further businesses on top of that base: Nawy Now, an on-balance-sheet mortgage originator that offloads loans to banks through securitisation; Nawy Shares, a fractional-ownership platform; and Nawy Unlocked, a service that finances renovation of idle or unfurnished rental units, acquired in late 2024 from a start-up called ROA.
The company has said it has facilitated more than 60,000 property searches and supported $1.4bn in cumulative transaction volume by the end of 2024, up from $38m in 2020.
Nawy raised $75m last year, split between $52m in equity led by Partech Africa and $23m in debt from local banks, one of the largest rounds recorded in Egypt’s real estate technology sector. It has said it intends to use the capital to expand into Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and to develop artificial-intelligence-based services.
The company has also moved into capital markets. Together with asset manager Synergy Capital, Nawy closed an oversubscribed EGP443m ($9m) fund last year backed by a portfolio of mortgages originated through its financing arm — a securitisation structured under an Ijarah, or Islamic lease-to-own, framework. “This fund proves how a proptech platform can directly shape financial innovation by bridging real estate with capital markets,” Amr Malek, Nawy’s chief financial officer, said at the time.
Regulators tighten the framework
Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has simultaneously moved to bring digital property platforms under closer supervision. Nawy is one of the companies that have been granted licences to establish real estate investment funds.
“The growing interest from these platforms to operate within a regulatory framework signals an increasing awareness of the legal landscape and the importance of customer protection,” the FRA said in a statement. The regulator said its aim was not to constrain innovation but to steer business models toward compliance, and it has published a list of unlicensed platforms as part of a wider effort to close gaps in oversight of online real estate and investment services.
The FRA has since revised the financial thresholds that real estate companies must meet to convert into investment funds, replacing a requirement tied to the ratio of net equity to total assets with a flat minimum of EGP500m ($9.7m) in net equity. FRA chairman Islam Azzam said the change reflected the fact that developers’ obligations are closely tied to project delivery timelines rather than to asset holdings at a single point in time.
In Morocco, where Yakeey has built what its founder, Karim Beqqali, calls a “human-augmented finance” model — combining AI-based valuations with a network of roughly 2,000 field advisers who verify listings in person — a second company has also raised capital this year. Agenz, founded in 2021 by brothers Malik and Badr Belkeziz, raised $5m in a seed round co-led by Paris-based Breega, Attijariwafa Ventures (the venture arm of Attijariwafa Bank) and pan-African fund Saviu Ventures.
Morocco’s property technology sector remains smaller than Egypt’s, but new rules governing civil real estate companies and fiscal reporting requirements for property transactions are creating pressure — and opportunity — for platforms that can offer structured documentation and data at scale.
A sector in transition
The IFC’s expanding interest, the capital raised by Nawy, Yakeey and Agenz, and the tightening of Egyptian and Moroccan regulatory frameworks point to a shift in how North African real estate technology companies are perceived by investors and regulators alike: less as listing portals and increasingly as financial intermediaries operating in a sector historically characterised by informal transactions and limited price transparency.
Whether that shift will produce durable business models remains an open question. Nawy, Yakeey and Agenz all face the challenge of scaling technology-driven services in markets where much of the property transaction chain — notaries, banks, brokers and developers — continues to operate through established, often paper-based processes. Regulators in both countries have signalled they intend to accommodate digital platforms rather than restrict them, but licensing requirements, capital thresholds and compliance costs are rising in tandem with investor interest.
Neither the IFC nor Nawy responded has disclosed the terms of the prospective equity investment.