Last week in brief...Exits and planned exits made up most of the deal news in Africa last week. They came in a a variety of shapes and sizes to the benefit of private equity investors both large and small.

In Morocco, Amethis Finance is selling its stake in Dislog Group back to H&S Invest Holding, the investment vehicle of the Beklhayate family, which first acquired the company in 2005. The Paris-headquartered private equity firm had originally backed the Moroccan consumer goods distributor in 2014, ending up with a 29% stake in the business on behalf of its Amethis Maghreb Fund I. Moncef Belkhayate, H&S Invest’s Founder and President of Dislog Group led the acquisition.

Meanwhile, Cauris Management, a private equity fund that predominantly backs opportunities in francophone West Africa, is selling its stake in Banque Populaire pour L’Epargne et Le Crédit or BPEC to SUNU Group. The deal, terms of which remain undisclosed, gives Cauris’s second fund, Cauris Croissance, a full exit from the asset. SUNU now holds a control stake in the Togolese bank.

There are 3 much larger potential exits in the works. The most readily recognizable company of the 3 is Jumia, who filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchangelast week. The ecommerce company will use the capital to grow company’s existing business, improve the customer experience for both buyers and sellers and add more logistics partners to its network.

Founded in 2012, the firm has several high-profile backers including Rocket Internet, AXA, Goldman Sachs, Orange Digital Ventures, CDC Group, and MTN.

In another potential IPO, Network International, a Middle East and Africa payments processor, is planning a flotation on the London Stock Exchange next month. The Dubai-headquartered payments processor in which Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic hold a combined 49% stake, is not looking to raise any capital through the offering, which should allow its existing shareholders to exit part of their holdings.

Staying in the payments sector, Mastercard has agreed to buy Transfast, a cross-border payments company backed by, among others, Apis Partners. The London-headquartered private equity firm first backed the company via its $287 million Apis Growth Fund I in 2016, acquiring a minority stake in the company for an undisclosed sum.

With direct integrations with over 300 banks around the world, Transfast’s payments network now covers 125 countries including several in Africa, enabling cross-border person-to-person, business-to-person and business-to-business payments services to their partners and clients via APIs, SFTP, web and mobile product applications.

In investment news, Africa Healthcare Network has closed its Series A round, raising capital from existing investor, Polaris Partners, and Africa Healthcare Fund, a vehicle managed by Africa Asia Investing & Consulting or AAIC. The fresh capital will be used by the chain of kidney care and dialysis centers to fund the firm’s growth in Tanzania and Kenya as well as support its expansion plans for West and Southern Africa over the next 2 years.

Bill McGlashan, the founder and head of TPG Growth and its social impact fund, The Rise Fund, has left the company. His departure follows the revelation early last week that he is one of the individuals accused of participating in a college admissions bribery scheme in the USA. The Rise Fund has been involved in several deals on the continent in the past year, including Cellulant's Series C round, the acquisition of a stake in Wilderness Holdings as well as a Series A round for Mines, a fintech startup based in Silicon Valley and Nigeria.

Gulf Capital announced the appointment of a new senior executive for Gulf Credit Partners, its private debt business. The Abu Dhabi-headquartered firm has hired Saharaf F. Sharaf as a Managing Director of the business, which makes mezzanine debt and structured capital deals in SMEs in the Middle East and North Africa.

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.

Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham is a senior media executive who has spent the last 15 years of his career working for some of the world’s most respected M&A and Private Equity media companies including Dow Jones’s publications Private Equity Analyst and VentureWire and most recently, The Deal. He has built a number of successful digital and event content businesses, both subscription and sponsor-supported, delivering information and content-marketing services to clients in the M&A and broader deal ecosystem. He recently struck out on his own and launched Rowayton Press, a multi-platform media company focused on the private capital opportunities in emerging and frontier markets. Mr. Cunningham holds a Bachelors degree from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.

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