Eaton Towers, the African tower investments group headquartered in London, has secured a US$150m cash injection to expand its business.
The company said the funding is made by Capital International Private Equity Funds (CIPEF), a private equity investor…
Eaton Towers, the African tower investments group headquartered in London, has secured a US$150m cash injection to expand its business.
The company said the funding is made by Capital International Private Equity Funds (CIPEF), a private equity investor that focuses on emerging markets. The funding will be used to acquire, build and develop telecom towers across Africa for both existing and new projects.
CIPEF joins current shareholder African Development Partners I, a private equity fund advised by Development Partners International, LLP (“DPI”), which has been an investor in Eaton Towers since the early stages of the company’s existence.
CIPEF was founded in 1992, and invested approximately $3bn in equity in more than 75 emerging market companies since. According to Eaton Towers, CIPEF has significant experience in telecommunications and related infrastructure in emerging markets.
Alan Harper, Chief Executive of Eaton Towers, said: “Their [CIPEF’s] backing, combined with our management team’s expertise in Africa and telecoms management, will give further momentum to our efforts to become a major independent provider of shared tower facilities across Africa. We expect to raise significant additional debt on the back of this new equity commitment.”
Eaton said the new funding will enable the company to buy additional tower portfolios from operators and build new towers on which it will sell co-location and shared-infrastructure facilities to mobile operators.
In October 2010, Eaton Towers signed a 10-year contract to take over the operations and co-location management of 750 telecom towers for Vodafone Ghana and the company plans to extend its operations across other parts of Africa.
