Mineworkers Provident Fund (MWPF) has announced a $20 million commitment to the Convergence Partners Digital Infrastructure Fund.
Convergence has backing from several international development finance institutions with the aim of accelerating the digital infrastructure rollout critically needed across the African continent, to address the problems of availability, quality and cost of digital infrastructure.
The allocation from MWPF will be used to fund several types of infrastructure needed to enable Africa’s active participation in the digital economy. These include communication backbone infrastructure such as 5G, cloud and edge processing infrastructure such as data centres, wireless access technologies, as well as continuing investments into broadband network infrastructure.
The Convergence fund builds on a successful track record of two previous funds which have seen both strong returns and high impact. Previous investments have contributed meaningfully to improving digital communications availability, quality and price, and the new fund will continue to improve access to services and provide lower costs.
Mathabo Makhaya, investment committee chair of MWPF, says: “We see this as a strong investment opportunity for our members as well as being critical for Africa’s digital transition. This kind of investment contributes to allowing our people access to high quality, affordable digital services.”
Andile Ngcaba, chairman and founding partner of Convergence, adds: “We are honoured to be embarking on the journey of this Fund alongside the Mineworkers Provident Fund (MWPF) as the first African investor into this fund. Convergence Partners has intentionally adopted a pan-African perspective, convinced that for Africa to achieve the 2030 SDGs and realise the AU 2063 vision, it is vital to leverage technology innovation to build a Digital Africa.
“Furthermore, our investment outlook points to Africa’s readiness to exploit the demographic dividend of African youth to create jobs and generate economic growth on the Continent. Therefore, we take great pride in our long-standing proven track record of Impact Investing on the Continent and confidence placed on us by MWPF.”