A group led by Harith General Partners is buying out an infrastructure fund with stakes in various businesses, including Lanseria Airport and fibre operators Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, for R6.5bn.
Harith InfraCo, Zungu Investments and Mergence Investment Managers, together with institutional investors, have acquired the Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund’s (PAIDF1) shareholding in Aldwych Holdings Ltd (AHL), owners of Anergi Holding Group; Community Investment Venture Holdings (CIVH), owners of Maziv Group; and Lanseria Lanseria Holdings. Maziv owns Dark Fibre Africa as well as Vumatel.
“Harith InfraCo’s acquisition of the PAIDF assets is also remarkable for its timing, coming as it does during a period of sluggish fundraising and exit activity within the private equity space in which we have played since our founding 18 years ago,” Harith CEO Sipho Makhubela said in a statement.
He said the transaction, along with Harith’s 2022 disposal of the fund’s shareholding in another asset, the continental digital infrastructure giant MainOne, to Nasdaq-listed Equinix, “cements our standing as investment practitioners with great acumen, who have earned our stripes over the past 18 years, and now have an impeccable, proven track record”.
PAIDF I, which is winding down its investments, was set up in 2007 to invest in infrastructure development projects in sectors such as power and energy, telecommunication, transport, water and sanitation in Africa. PAIDF I’s institutional investors include pension funds and financial and development finance institutions.
PAIDF 1 has a 37.5% stake in Lanseria Holdings, which owns Lanseria International Airport, the second-largest airport in Gauteng, and South Africa’s only privately owned international airport.
It has a 37.92% stake in AHL, whose AHL Anergi owns six power generation assets, including Kelvin Power; Lake Turkana Wind Power and Rabai Power in Kenya; Azura Power in Nigeria; Ghana’s Twin City Energy; and another asset in Sierra Leone. These power stations supply energy to 23-million customers. Lake Turkana Wind Power is the continent’s largest wind power generation project, which supplies 14% of Kenya’s energy grid. In addition to the existing energy platform, AHL is pursuing other investment opportunities aimed at advancing the continent’s just energy transition.
The infrastructure fund owns a 15.3% stake in CIVF, whose assets include Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, Vumacam, Herotel, Sigfox South Africa, an IoT network and Britelink MCT, a full-service optical fibre company that specialises in planning, implementing, maintaining and repairing fibre optic telecommunications.
Maziv was recently dealt a huge blow when its fibre deal with Vodacom was blocked by competition authorities. The deal would have resulted in Vodacom buying a 30% stake in Maziv and also transferring its fibre business to the company.
Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub described the ruling as a travesty for the company and the industry. Pieter Uys, head of strategic investments at investment holding company Remgro, which also has shares in CIVH, said blocking the deal between Maziv and Vodacom would delay the rollout of fibre to low-income parts of the country. Maziv has committed R10bn over the next five years to getting fibre to at least a million homes.
Uys said instead of five years it will now take ten or 12 years to connect these homes. So far Maziv has rolled out fibre to almost 30,000 homes in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra.
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