Mastercard backs Airtel Money unit, Apis exits Tutuka in share swap deal, EFG Hermes fund hits $150mln, and more...

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Last week in brief... Airtel Africa has landed another big name and a healthy dollop of capital for a stake in its mobile money unit. Two weeks ago, private equity giant TPG invested $200 million via The Rise Fund in exchange for a minority stake in Airtel Mobile Commerce. as the unit is named. Last week, it was Mastercard's turn. The global payments firm is adding another $100 million to the pot for a smaller stake in the unit which will hold all Airtel's mobile money businesses on the continent under one umbrella.

As we reported previously, Airtel Mobile Commerce is valued at $2.65 billion on a cash and debt-free basis. Airtel Africa, which is selling as much as 25% of the unit to outside investors, is using the proceeds to pay down debt.

The infrastructure space saw two items of note last week. Meridiam is backing a two-year-old developer and operator of sustainable data centres in Africa. The infrastructure investment firm is investing a total of $48 million in The Raxio Group which will be used to support the company's ongoing deployment of Tier III facilities on the continent. Raxio is already close to completing the construction of a co-located carrier-neutral data center in Uganda and is in the design phase for a similar facility in Ethiopia. The company has plans for more data centres in four additional countries.

News came out of a new infrastructure fund focused on South Africa last week. Infra Impact Investment Managers held the first close for a planned $100 million fund focused on mid-market infrastructure deals. The new fund has landed commitments totaling R250 million, or about $17 million, from an as-yet-unnamed fund-of-funds investor, and plans to pull off its investment deal by the end of June. The Cape Town-based investment firm was launched early last year.

In Egypt, ADQ, one of Abu Dhabi's three sovereign wealth institutions, is buying Amoun Pharmaceuticals from Bausch Health for $740 million. Amoun, which was founded twenty-three years ago, is a developer, manufacturer, and marketer of generic pharmaceuticals and animal health products. The company operates a large manufacturing facility in El Obour City, a suburb of Cairo, as well as five commercial outlets across the country and sells its products both locally and overseas.

Staying in Egypt, the country's sovereign wealth fund announced it is investing in the Egypt Education Fund, a private equity fund sponsored by EFG Hermes. The fund's strategy is to build a portfolio of kindergarten through twelfth-grade private schools in Egypt via a mix of acquisitions and both brownfield and greenfield investments. With the Sovereign Fund of Egypt's commitment, the fund has now hit its final goal target of $150 million and is continuing to raise capital. It seems to have captured a lot of investor interest. Its first close in 2019 was heavily oversubscribed.

Criterion Africa Partners is exiting an investment it made almost a decade ago. The specialist investor in forestry assets has sold Peak Timbers, an integrated forestry business in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) which the private equity firm acquired in 2012 on behalf of the $160 million Africa Sustainable Forestry Fund. The acquirer is the Shiselweni Forestry Company, a subsidiary of TWK Investments, a listed holding company for a diversified group of companies operating in the forestry, agriculture, and financial services sectors. Terms were not disclosed.

From its eucalyptus plantations and sawmill, Peak produces lumber, mining timber, utility poles, pulpwood, and biomass for its markets in Africa. The company currently harvests 350,000 cubic meters of timber every year from its plantations, an output that is expected to increase by another 200,000 cubic meters every year as the younger plantations mature.

In other exit news, Apis Partners has sold its holding in Tutuka, exchanging its 62.6% stake in the payments business for an undisclosed stake in the business’s acquirer, SaltPay. The fintech business has offices in Europe and South Africa and sells payments and other associated services to small and medium-sized businesses in markets around the world. In buying Apis’s holding, the firm is expected to accelerate merchant growth by providing a new suite of services in the issuing vertical.

Partech Africa has led a group of investors backing an extension of Tugende’s Series A round which closed late last year, having raised a total of $6.3 million from a group of new and existing investors. The tech-enabled asset financing startup has scooped another $3.6 million from Paris-based Partech’s $140 million African fund, Enza Capital, and several unnamed angel investors. As part of the deal, Tidjane Deme, who co-leads the activities of the Africa fund, is joining Tugende’s board of directors.

The Uganda-based startup will use the capital to invest in additional technology development, grow its core financing product for the owners and drivers of motorcycle taxis (or "bodas"), and speed up its plans to offer asset financing opportunities to MSMEs in other sectors such as retail and agribusiness.

And finally, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (or DFC) is backing Root Capital's SME financing activities in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia with $35 million. The impact investment nonprofit's initiatives in two sub-Saharan countries, in particular, look like being the major beneficiaries of this latest DFC investment. In East Africa, the firm will put DFC’s financing to work helping farmers in Uganda adopt climate-smart agricultural practices while across the continent, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the money will be used to provide coffee farmers with tools to overcome financial instability and rebuild their businesses after years of civil war.

That’s it for this week. As always, you can review these and other stories by clicking through to this week’s preview edition of the newsletter.

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