Liquid Telecom has confirmed that it has completed last year’s $180 million sale of 8% stake to the British government’s Sovereign Wealth Fund for developing countries known as Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC). This transaction will see CDC become an 8% shareholder in the pan-African telecommunications operator, and will be the largest investment by the CDC Group in an African company to date.
In a statement through the Irish Stock Exchange on Wednesday, Liquid Telecom said that all conditions preceding the deal announced in December 2018 had been met and the money has been received. “The investment will enable Liquid Telecom to further expand its fibre footprint and to broaden its data centres and cloud services product portfolio across Africa serving wholesale, enterprise, and retail customers,” said Liquid Telecom.
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Liquid Telecom, which is headquartered in London, was founded by Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, the founder of Econet Group. It is one of the largest Pan African companies and it operates fibre-optic networks in 20 African countries with fibre infrastructure spanning from Cape Town to Cairo. In 2017, Liquid Telecom acquired South Africa’s Neotel in a R6.5-billion deal.
“This is a capital-intensive business,” Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa said in December. He added that the plan was to seek a longer-term partner to back expansion into countries that don’t always offer a quick return on investment. The deal is also set to allow Liquid Telecom to postpone its initial public offering. “The listing option will always be there and we will follow instructions from the shareholders,” said Masiyiwa.
“Data centres are the company’s fastest growing business and it already operates some of the biggest and most sophisticated data centres on the continent. It is expected to push more aggressively westwards into countries like Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana with this new fund”, Liquid Telecom said in a statement.
Investors have been pouring money into the company, whose investors already includes major global investors. The Liquid Telecom Group is part of Masiyiwa’s global business portfolio, which he built when he left Zimbabwe 19 years ago.
CDC Group is a development finance institution owned by the British government that focuses on investments in Asia and Africa.
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