Supporting the rise of a pan-African champion: the successful acquisition of the Netis Group by a consortium comprising Amethis, AfricInvest, Proparco, and IFC
A consortium of leading financial investors backing a high-growth telecom leader
Over the past fifteen years, Netis has undergone a remarkable transformation. Founded in 2009 to serve its first clients in Ghana, the Group initially focused on providing telecom equipment to tower operators (“TowerCos”). Since then, it has established itself as a leading provider of telecom network services across Africa, with operations in 14 countries in West and East Africa and more than 3,200 employees. Today, Netis is one of the continent’s key players in the installation and maintenance of telecom tower and fiber-optic networks.
In 2018, Enko Capital Managers acquired a minority stake in Netis through the Enko Africa Private Equity Fund (“EAPEF”), which targets mid-sized African companies. This investment was increased in 2020, giving Enko a majority shareholding. Over its five years as a shareholder, Enko played a pivotal role in scaling up the Group’s operations.
With nearly €3 billion raised and invested over the past three decades, Amethis and AfricInvest rank among Africa’s most influential private equity investors. Partnering with two leading development finance institutions, IFC and Proparco, they formed the ideal consortium to complete one of the largest private equity transactions in Africa in 2023.Enexus acted as the lead M&A advisor to support the structuring of this complex acquisition.
A large-scale and demanding acquisition
Acquisitions of this scale by financial investors remain rare in Africa. Netis’s geographic footprint, spanning 14 jurisdictions across both Anglophone and Francophone Africa, added further complexity to the transaction. Few buyers combine the financial capacity and the operational expertise required to successfully execute such a project.
To generate sufficient competitive traction, it was essential to structure the process in a way that encouraged the formation of consortiums capable of competing with individual buyers. The founders’ decision to remain minority shareholders also represented a key challenge: their interests had to be aligned with those of both the sellers and the acquirers. This delicate balance, which required intense negotiations and a disciplined M&A process, proved decisive to the success of the transaction.
The birth of an African multinational?
The absence of succession planning among founders remains one of the main obstacles of the growth of independent African companies. Transforming a family-owned business into a multinational requires a gradual transfer of control while ensuring the financial support necessary to remain independent.
This transaction achieved precisely that. The founders of Netis successfully guided the company’s evolution from a single-client telecom equipment supplier in Ghana to a diversified telecom services group operating across 14 countries. Now backed by strong financial shareholders, they have the resources to continue expanding autonomously and reach a new stage in their development.
The transaction also reflects the growing maturity of the African telecom sector, where demand for connectivity continues to rise rapidly. With the support of its new partners, Netis is well positioned to play a central role in this dynamic, and perhaps to become one of the first truly pan-African multinationals in telecom services.
