South Africa’s private equity company, Harith General Partners Pty Ltd. has invested over $1 billion in infrastructure into a fibre-optic cable network in Malawi.
“We have had two funding rounds, one of $630 million and one of $400 million that we are in the process of deploying…Telecommunications make up an important part of our investment plans, together with energy and transportation.” Said, Harith company director, Emile Du Toit on phone to My Broadband.
Harith has put almost $800 million to work in African infrastructure so far, a third of that in telecoms. The latest investment will make it the majority shareholder in Malawi’s biggest fiber network provider, Open Connect Limited, he also said.
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Open Connect’s fiber network stretches 2,250 kilometers (1,398 miles) through a country of more than 18 million people, where services such as telecoms have overtaken agriculture as the biggest sector of an economy that grew by 4 percent last year, according to the World Bank.
Harith’s other fiber investments in Africa include an almost 30 percent stake in Dark Fibre Africa which is controlled by South Africa’s richest man Johann Rupert, and also, a data center company in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
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