Africa Mobile Networks Limited has completed the financial closing on a senior secured credit agreement for $20 million. A rollout of mobile communications towers in rural and extremely rural Africa is projected to be financed by the new financing package, which is anticipated to assist bring about long-term advantages.
The facility, offered by the OP Finnfund Global Impact Fund I and the BlueOrchard Sustainable Assets Fund (BOSAF), will deliver a USD 20 million debt investment package to promote the expansion of Africa Mobile Networks (“AMN”). The deal was revealed in November 2022, and the financial closing took place in March 2023.
AMN seeks to dominate the African rural telecoms market by constructing over 10,000 base stations throughout 20 Sub-Saharan nations, covering a combined population of over 35 million people. The portfolio of AMN includes exposure to a sizable number of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), including Guinea, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.
The news comes after a consortium led by Metier, CDC Group (a development finance institution and impact investor in the UK), DEG (a development finance institution in Germany), Proparco (the private sector arm of the French Development Agency), and other top financial institutions and investment managers successfully invested US$36 million in equity in 2021.
“One-seventh of the world’s population, or 1.1 billion people, live in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 62% of them being rural. It is not only the area with the highest population growth, but it also has the largest proportion of the global population without mobile service. More than 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are thought to live in communities that do not currently have usable mobile network connectivity. In an effort to overcome this difficulty, “explained AMN CEO Michael Darcy.
Dentons provided assistance, and London-based Qbera Capital LLP (Finance) provided advice to AMN (Legal).
