The African economy is growing quickly, and the 2016 IMF report on the World Economic Outlook proves it. Of the top 10 fastest growing economies in the world, the top 3 were Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Senegal. This made Africa a very lucrative destination, and many international companies established themselves in the continent.
For Forex brokers, they saw a ripe market that was ready to be penetrated and with lots of potentials. In South Africa, for example, the Bank for International Settlements showed that the retail Forex market in South Africa had a $21 billion trading volume in April 2016. This was a huge improvement to the $14 billion traded in 2013. This may seem like a drop in the bucket that is the Forex market, but it still demonstrated that there was plenty of potentials.