Harith General Partners, which funds infrastructure development across Africa, has sold its stake in MainOne, one of West Africa’s largest communications services operators, to digital infrastructure company Equinix for $320m (R4.7bn).
Equinix, which is listed on the Nasdaq, said in a statement on Tuesday that the acquisition is part of its long-term strategy to become a leading digital infrastructure company in Nigeria, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
Harith CEO Sipho Makhubela said the group’s investment in MainOne helped bridge the digital divide by providing high-speed internet in West Africa and accelerating economic growth.
“We are now well poised to capitalise on the next wave of digital opportunities on the continent,” he said.
Harith was founded in 2006 and has invested in nine African countries, including Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa. According to its LinkedIn page, the company manages $630m in its Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund (PAIDF), of which MainOne was a part.
The sale will include MainOne’s four data centres; its submarine network, which extends over 7,000km from Portugal, along the coast of West Africa; 1,200km of terrestrial fibre in three Nigerian states; and access to key internet exchanges to speed up local access to global networks such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook.
MainOne was founded in 2010 by Funke Opeke, who is still at the helm of the company, which has headquarters in Lagos. MainOne operates in Nigeria, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and home to more than 143-million internet subscribers, according to figures from the Nigerian Communication Commission for February 2022.
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