CONVERGENCE PARTNERS, a private equity investor focused on the technology sector across sub-Saharan Africa, has announced the successful first close of its third fund, the Convergence Partners Digital Infrastructure Fund (CPDIF) at US$120 million out of a targeted final size of US$250 million.
With more than US$400m of capital under management, Convergence Partners remains the largest private equity investor dedicated to digital infrastructure in Africa.
Investors in CPDIF comprise of leading institutions that continue to support African growth including the DC Group (the UK’s development finance institution), the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Proparco (the private sector arm of the Agence Française de Développement – AFD Group).
PDF investments will be driven by the infrastructure needs of the emerging growth themes in the digital infrastructure ecosystem, specifically fibre, wireless, data centres, towers etc., as well as 5G, Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), fintech and network virtualisation.
CPDIF’s first investment is in Ctrack, a transaction that was announced earlier in the year. As a data analytics business servicing the fleet management and insurance industries, the business sits at the intersection of AI and IoT with all its solutions being cloud-delivered.
The fund also has a strong and measurable impact objective and, via its participation in the build-out of Africa’s digital infrastructure, will boost entrepreneurship, innovation, skills development and job creation through massively boosting access to the internet and all the critical digital tools it offers.
Africa remains by far the most underserved region in terms of broadband and digital technology access. Despite the advances in the rollout of digital infrastructure on the continent, fixed broadband penetration in sub-Saharan Africa still lags far behind at about 7% of the population.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Convergence Partners, Brandon Doyle said: “We are delighted to have achieved this milestone particularly given the headwinds in African PE fundraising generally, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business activities over the past twelve months. We are very pleased with the level of support from both old and new investors and believe this reflects our solid track record and the opportunity CPDIF presents at this crucial time in both tech and African context.”
In the past 15 years, Convergence Partners has invested in submarine cable systems, geostationary satellites, terrestrial long-haul, metro and access fibre, wireless networks, data centres, as well as service provision delivered by these networks such as enterprise connectivity, SD-WAN, fintech & health tech solutions, data switching and more.
Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of Convergence Partners noted that even though they pride themselves in contributing to the immense digital growth in Africa through numerous communication infrastructure investments across the continent, “the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that there is still much work to drive digital inclusion.”
Africa, h intimated, is currently experiencing the highest growth in international internet bandwidth compared to any other region in the world.
“As we embark on this journey as CPDIF, the next twelve years will be spent continuing to build on our original vision of ubiquitous pan-African communications”, he added.
By Nii Adjei Mensahfio