Telecom
Vantage Capital Exits Vumatel
Vantage Capital, Africa’s largest mezzanine debt fund manager, has announced that it has fully exited its investment in Vumatel, the largest fibre-to-the-home network provider in South Africa.
The company was established in October 2014 by Niel Schoeman and Johan Pretorius, industry veterans who had previously started up the Birchman Group and Conduct Telecom before creating Vumatel.
Vumatel started out its life rolling out South Africa’s first fibre optic network to homes in Parkhurst by partnering with internet service providers who provided connectivity to their residential customers whilst Vumatel remained the owner and operator of the infrastructure.
At the time of Vantage’s investment in 2016, Vumatel had deployed its open-access fibre optic network across fourteen suburbs in Johannesburg, passing 16,000 homes and had secured around 4,000 subscribers. It had also received an equity investment from Investec Equity Partners.
Whilst banks were unwilling to fund the company at this early stage in its life, Vantage recognised the tremendous potential of the business and supported it with R250m ($17m) of capex funding to accelerate its rollout.
Today, just four years later, Vumatel has become the largest provider of fibre to the home in the country. Over the life of Vantage’s investment, the number of homes passed has grown forty-fold and the number of subscribers fifty-fold as the company has laid thousands of kilometres of cable.
Vumatel has also played a major role in upgrading the infrastructure of South African schools by providing free uncapped fibre services to public and private schools that its networks bypass.
In 2018, Vumatel was recognised with a prestigious award from the South African Venture Capital Association for the best medium-sized South African growth champion.
Last year, CIVH majority owned by Remgro acquired full ownership of Vumatel after initially securing a 34.9% stake in 2018.
Vantage’s investors were beneficiaries of this transaction from both ends as Vantage had in a separate transaction provided New GX, a black owned and controlled investor, with mezzanine funding to part-finance their fibre-related assets including local manufacturing capacity.
Vantage exited the New GX transaction in 2018 and last week, Vantage’s mezzanine facility was refinanced by Vumatel after it secured substantial funding from a consortium of South African banks.
To date, Vantage has now successfully exited twelve investments across its three generations of mezzanine debt funds generating cumulative proceeds of R4.2bn ($360m) and x-money of 2.3x (1.8x in dollars).
Luc Albinski, co-managing partner at Vantage Capital, pointed out that “Vumatel is one of our many success stories, where we have supported businesses with mezzanine debt to achieve their growth ambitions. In this investment, we saw the opportunity to partner with an exceptional management team in a fast-growing sector and we are proud of the role Vantage played in unlocking the exceptional growth that Vumatel has since delivered.”
Warren van der Merwe, co-managing partner at Vantage Capital, added: “The Vumatel investment is an excellent case study of how mezzanine debt can unlock growth opportunities where banks remain risk-averse. In this way, Vantage plays an important role in supporting mid-size corporates before they are sufficiently established to fully fund their operations and growth ambitions with bank debt.”
Hugo van den Heever, associate partner at Vantage Capital, added “we have focused a lot of attention on the technology infrastructure sector with its high growth potential. In line with our pan-African mandate, we have looked at opportunities across the continent including markets such as Nigeria, the East African Community and Egypt. We hope to be able to announce further investments in this sector shortly.”
MTN Foundation has been spotlighted as a model for private sector-driven healthcare development in Nigeria, following commendations at the 6th Arthur Mbanefo Lecture held at the University of Lagos, Akoka.
Themed “A Healthy Nation is a Wealthy Nation: The Role of Impact Investments and Sustainable Financing in Nigeria,” the lecture featured Dr. Tolulope Adewole, Managing Director of NSIA Advanced Medical Services Limited (MedServe), as keynote speaker.
Dr. Adewole praised the Foundation’s strategic investments, noting that MTN commits 1% of its profit after tax annually to development sectors. “They’ve invested ₦31.75 billion, reaching over 32 million Nigerians. Though only 25% went to health, it accounted for 51% of all lives impacted. That’s catalytic,” he said.
He cited MTN’s dialysis centre programme as a transformative intervention for patients with kidney disease, and highlighted community-focused initiatives like the Y’ello Doctor mobile scheme and ‘What Can We Do Together’ (WCWDT) programme, which revitalised 164 Primary Healthcare Centres, including 44 in 2024 alone.
Executive Director of MTN Foundation, Odunayo Sanya, reflected on the COVID-19 pandemic’s exposure of systemic health vulnerabilities. “When COVID hit, we realised a health emergency is also an economic and social emergency,” she said.
Sanya revealed that of the 52 PHCs remodeled in 2024, only one had clean water. “I’m not a doctor, but I know you can’t live a good life without clean water,” she added, reaffirming the Foundation’s commitment to bridging healthcare gaps in underserved communities.
Hundreds of university students across Africa are set to benefit from a new gamified learning experience on digital rights and inclusion launched by the leading pan-African non-profit organisation, Paradigm Initiative (PIN).
The Digital Rights and Inclusion Board Learning Experience (DRIBLE) is a game developed by Paradigm Initiative with support from the Open Society Foundations (OSF). The custom-designed board game provides young individuals with a fun and engaging entry point into digital rights and inclusion conversations, training sessions and storytelling tools.
The board game aims to build digital literacy, deepen understanding of online safety, and introduce young individuals to the organisation’s tools of impact. Currently being piloted in three universities: University of Lagos, Nigeria, the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi, Kenya and the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST) in Dakar, Senegal, it will enhance interactions and create a holistic experience.
Speaking at the event launch at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, ‘Gbenga Sesan, Paradigm Initiative’s Executive Director, said: “PIN’s vision is to reach 20 million people through our Digital Inclusion and Digital Rights interventions. From Lagos, to Dakar, to Nairobi.. we will use the vehicle of our new Digital Rights and Inclusion Board Learning Experience (DRIBLE) which entails using gamification, training, multimedia materials, tools and other interventions to connect African youth with digital opportunities and protect their digital rights.”
‘Gbenga gave the keynote address on “Digital inclusion at PIN, our Past, Present and Future” and Nnenna Paul-Ugochukwu, the organisation’s Chief Operating Officer, said the goal of the learning experience would be instrumental in raising awareness of digital rights among the youth, building their capacity to address digital rights and inclusion issues in their communities. Prof. Olunifesi Adekunle Suraj shared a goodwill message with the students and other stakeholders.
Paradigm Initiative, which has been operational since 2007, started in a tiny cybercafe in Ajegunle, Lagos, Nigeria. Today, the organisation has expanded its wings to cover six African countries; Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe, impacting the livelihoods of over 150,000 young Africans.
The launch of DRIBLE builds on the progress the organisation has made over the years in tackling the challenge of digital exclusion across Africa.
Paradigm Initiative’s tools of impact include Ripoti, a platform that enables individuals to report digital rights violations, Ayeta, a platform that provides digital security resources for stakeholders, more so human rights activists, defenders, journalists and other vulnerable groups, and the organisation’s latest short film, Whispers in the Wires.
Targeted at students, PIN rolled out a Campus Tour in the three universities on the continent starting July 15th, 2025.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has intensified its crackdown on fake accounts and spam, announcing it removed over 10 million fake profiles and roughly 500,000 spam accounts in the first half of 2025.
The sweeping purge is part of Meta’s broader effort to combat impersonation, fake engagement, and content duplication, aiming to elevate authentic creators and improve the quality of content across its platforms.
In a blog post, Meta said: “We’re making progress. In the first half of 2025, we took action on around 500,000 accounts engaged in spammy behaviour or fake engagement. We also removed about 10 million profiles impersonating large content producers.”
Meta stressed that accounts which primarily repost or recycle content without meaningful edits will face penalties such as reduced reach and the loss of monetisation tools.
The company also warned that repeatedly sharing unoriginal content — whether videos, photos, or text — undermines the platform’s integrity by crowding out genuine voices and making it harder for new creators to grow.
To support authentic creators, Meta is rolling out new tools that automatically trace reposted content back to its original source. The company says this will help ensure rightful credit and give higher visibility to original posts.
“Pages and profiles that post mostly original content tend to enjoy wider distribution across Facebook. Simply stitching clips together or adding a watermark will no longer count as meaningful editing. Content that provides real value and tells an authentic story is likely to perform better,” Meta explained.
Creators are also being cautioned against uploading content that includes watermarks from other platforms. Such posts could see their reach restricted or lose monetisation privileges altogether.
As part of its latest update, Meta introduced post-level insights on the Professional Dashboard, allowing creators to monitor how individual posts perform. They can also check their Support Home screen to see if their content or earnings are facing restrictions.
In a parallel development, Google’s YouTube updated its monetisation guidelines, stating that content deemed mass-produced or excessively repetitive will no longer qualify for ad revenue. The announcement initially sparked concern among creators, who feared it was a blanket ban on AI-generated content. YouTube later clarified:
“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetise.”
Both tech giants say these new policies are aimed at raising content standards and safeguarding genuine creators in a crowded and rapidly evolving digital landscape.
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