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Sector

Digital Economy

Financing the rails of Africa's digital economy

Overview

Digital is both an asset class and a lever. As an asset class, it is some of the most investable infrastructure on the continent: fintech and payment rails, broadband and connectivity, data centres, and the platforms that ride on them. As a lever, digital and data, increasingly powered by AI, are what make every other investment perform better and reach further, from credit decisions to portfolio monitoring to the way a programme reaches the last mile.

We work both sides. We help investors prepare, structure, and grow digital-infrastructure investments, and we help institutions and the companies they back use data and AI to widen access, sharpen decisions, and create value.

How we work

On the investment side, we bring the same readiness and value-creation discipline we bring to any sector, with a clear view of the unit economics, regulation, and infrastructure that make digital assets bankable. On the capability side, we help teams put data and AI to work responsibly inside real workflows. The test is the same as everywhere else: did it move capital, performance, or access, not just attention.

  • Digital infrastructure
  • Broadband connectivity
  • Data centres

From payment rails to platforms

Digital public infrastructure is the rail; inclusion happens on the platforms that ride it. We help build both sides, the shared infrastructure and the services that turn access into usage.

Example work
$900M+Broadband Infrastructure
$91MFiber project

At the infrastructure level, we led a flagship continental digital-economy initiative, originating upstream engagements with governments, DFIs, and private sponsors that unlocked more than $900 million of digital-infrastructure investment, national backbone networks, metro and long-distance fibre, mobile towers, data centres, and cloud. Alongside that programme work, we have originated and structured advisory and investment deals across telecom, media, and technology, finding the bankable opportunities, running the project preparation and structuring the solutions that get them financed.

We take that same discipline into individual portfolios and sector reform. We led the commercialisation advisory on a regional broadband project, running it from bid design project supervision, and we have advised on the privatisation and commercialisation of incumbent state assets, including mobile operators and wholesale broadband providers.

Upstream, we prepare the operations that carry this investment forward, leading the diagnostics, concept notes, stakeholder consultations, and appraisal work behind three digital-acceleration operations, and embedding digital pillars into lending operations across urban development, mobility, health, and education. It is the unglamorous preparation that turns digital ambition into financed, delivered infrastructure.

Let's move your next investment forward.

Tell us what you are preparing, growing, or strengthening, and we will tell you how we can help.

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