Why it pays for African private equity to control everything

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At a Glance

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• Majority ownership enables rapid capital deployment and strategic decisions in African PE markets.
• Operational control lets PE firms fix inefficiencies and scale businesses efficiently.
• Strong board authority aligns incentives, ensuring profitable exits and long-term value creation.

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In African private equity, control is not a power grab; it is the operating system. From Lagos to Casablanca, the continent’s most successful private equity (PE) transactions share a common DNA: decisive ownership, board dominance, and the ability to move capital, people, and strategy without friction. 

Minority positions may buy exposure, but control buys outcomes, and outcomes are what drive returns in Africa’s complex, regulation-heavy markets.

At its core, private equity is about raising long-term capital, acquiring meaningful stakes in businesses, fixing what is broken, scaling what works, and exiting at a premium. 

Tope Lawani – Helios Investment Partners
Nigerian businessman Temitope Lawani co-founded Helios Investment Partners, a $3 billion African PE powerhouse. Helios acquires controlling stakes across digital infrastructure, financial services, and consumer goods, scaling firms like Interswitch and Helios Towers. Strategic exits, including Vivo Energy, showcase Lawani’s ability to unlock value and drive transformative growth.

That value-creation cycle typically runs three to ten years. But in Africa, where operational inefficiencies, governance gaps, and policy risks are amplified, that cycle collapses without control.

This is why leading African dealmakers, from Femi Orebe’s Africa Capital Partners to Sam Ndelu at Blackstone Africa, Kola Karim’s Shoreline, Seyi Olanrewaju’s Lighthouse Capital, Bola Shagaya’s Pearlstone Partners, Tunde Folawiyo’s Folawiyo Group, and Hakeem Belo-Osagie’s Metis Capital Partners, structure transactions around majority ownership or outright operational dominance.

Control, in African private equity, is the difference between theory and execution.

Speed beats consensus
When a sponsor controls the board and senior appointments, capital allocation decisions happen quickly. Take these five examples:

1. Aliko Dangote
Dangote Group / Dangote Refinery & Cement
Fortune on Forbes: $25.7 billion
Dangote’s tight ownership and board control let him push rapid, capital-intensive expansions (cement across Africa; the super-refinery expansion plan) without the kinds of shareholder bargaining that slow listed firms. His ability to reallocate capital and secure external financing illustrates the “one-owner, fast decision” model.

2. Koos Bekker
Naspers, the Tencent bet and subsequent capital re-deployment
Fortune on Forbes: $3.9 billion
Under Bekker’s leadership Naspers made the decisive call to back Tencent (and later monetise that stake via sales and the Prosus restructuring). That kind of early, concentrated decision, and later, deliberate capital recycling into fintech and global tech bets, is only possible with strong board authority and sponsor conviction.

3. Jannie Mouton
Curro (take-private / foundation deal)
Fortune on Forbes:$2.2 billion
Mouton’s foundation move to buy and delist Curro is literal proof that control lets an owner change capital allocation and incentives overnight, turning a listed, dividend-driven schooling business into a mission-directed vehicle. Shareholder approvals and regulator filings show how control enables rapid strategic reframing.

4. Strive Masiyiwa
Econet / Cassava / Africa Data Centres
Fortune on Forbes: $1.3 billion
Masiyiwa’s founding ownership and sustained board influence at Econet and related platforms (Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Africa Data Centres) enabled fast roll-outs, capital allocation into pan-African infrastructure, and an operator-led, founder-controlled playbook that scales quickly across borders.

5. Isabel dos Santos
Unitel / Unitel International
Fortune on Forbes: $1.4 billion
Dos Santos exercised control over Unitel-linked entities, appointing managers and steering financing decisions. This case also shows the risks when sponsor control lacks transparency (resulting in litigation and asset freezes). It’s a stark illustration of how board control drives capital flows, for better or worse.
Note: Forbes removed her in 2021 after investigations revealed her wealth was largely from corrupt deals under her father’s presidency, leading to embezzlement charges, asset freezes in multiple countries.

Whether it is choosing between capex and dividends, approving acquisitions, changing pricing, or pivoting products, unified ownership eliminates delays that can destroy value in volatile markets. That speed is critical in turnarounds, regulatory arbitrage, and roll-up strategies, where hesitation can mean losing the market entirely.

Operations don’t fix themselves
Control allows PE firms to impose a standard operating playbook: KPIs tied to cash flow, procurement consolidation, ERP rollouts, vendor rationalisation, and lean management. These changes often require replacing management teams or renegotiating legacy contracts, moves that minority shareholders typically resist. Without authority, operational reform becomes optional. With control, it becomes inevitable.

Incentives must match exits
Private equity returns are engineered, not accidental. Majority ownership allows sponsors to design long-term incentive plans, equity options, and management compensation structures tied directly to exit multiples and internal rates of return. Free riders disappear. Holdouts lose leverage.

In African markets, where talent retention and governance discipline are uneven, this alignment is not cosmetic. It is existential.

Balance sheets matter
Financial engineering is another reason control matters. PE sponsors often restructure balance sheets, layer holding-company debt, redesign dividend waterfalls, and optimise tax structures across jurisdictions.

Johann Rupert’s investments
Johann Rupert offers perhaps the cleanest illustration. Through layered holding companies such as Richemont, Remgro and Reinet, the Rupert family has long separated economic exposure from voting control. Dual-class shares and offshore holding vehicles allow Rupert to preserve strategic authority, optimise dividends, and manage tax efficiency across Switzerland, Luxembourg and South Africa, while recycling capital into new investments without surrendering control. 

Aliko Dangote’s Dangote Industries
In Nigeria, Aliko Dangote has used scale-driven financial engineering to underpin Africa’s largest industrial bets. The Dangote Group’s refinery and fertiliser projects are structured with heavy project-level and group debt, layered across operating subsidiaries and holding entities.

This capital stack allows Dangote to retain ownership while deploying billions of dollars in long-term infrastructure, with dividend policy and potential listings calibrated around FX exposure and creditor obligations. 

Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC)
Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC) follows a similar logic in financial services. By combining listed investment vehicles with unlisted holding structures, Motsepe controls capital flows, dividend timing, and reinvestment strategy across banking, insurance and fintech assets, using balance-sheet discipline rather than day-to-day management to shape outcomes. 

These moves improve after-tax cash returns and covenant flexibility. Minority investors frequently block such restructuring. Controlling owners do not ask.

Africa rewards decisiveness
In distressed or underperforming assets, confidentiality is everything. Control allows sponsors to bring in turnaround advisors, renegotiate labour and lease terms, terminate vendors, and restructure quietly—without leaks, litigation, or shareholder vetoes that can accelerate collapse.

Exit timing is value
Perhaps most importantly, control determines how and when value is realised. Majority owners choose whether to exit via IPO, trade sale, or secondary transaction, and whether to stage exits to maximise multiple expansion.

In Africa, premature exits forced by minority shareholders often destroy long-term upside. Control preserves optionality. The continent already offers proof.
1. Interswitch (Nigeria)
Helios Investment Partners’ majority stake allowed it to professionalise governance, scale payments infrastructure, and later bring in global partners—unlocking partial exits at higher valuations.

2. Rack Centre (Nigeria)
Actis’ majority ownership enabled rapid, capital-intensive data-centre expansion, a strategy that would have stalled under fragmented ownership.

3. The Eazi Group (South Africa)
Ethos Private Equity’s 65 percent stake facilitated operational professionalisation and regional expansion.

4. Auto-parts businesses (South Africa)
Ethos’ controlling positions allowed strategic repositioning, governance resets, and margin discipline.

5. Fan Milk (West Africa)
Abraaj’s earlier majority involvement illustrated how consumer distribution plays demand tight supply-chain and pricing control, though the firm’s later collapse underscored the risks of misgovernance at the sponsor level. Across these deals, the pattern is consistent: unified ownership enabled decisive action.

Control beyond profit: the Curro case
Interestingly, the same control logic now underpins a very different transaction.

Jannie Mouton, founder of PSG Group and Capitec, through the Jannie Mouton Foundation, is acquiring 100 percent of Curro Holdings, South Africa’s largest private school operator, for about R7.2 billion ($420 million), with the intention of converting it into a nonprofit public benefit organisation. Shareholders approved the deal overwhelmingly. Curro will be delisted, ending quarterly earnings pressure.

While philanthropic in intent, the structure mirrors classic PE logic. Full control allows the foundation to redirect capital from dividends to bursaries, teacher training, and expansion into underserved areas, moves that would be difficult under a listed, profit-driven model.

In Africa, control is not ideological; it is structural.

Whether the objective is profit maximisation or social impact, fragmented ownership undermines execution. Majority control enables private equity sponsors, and foundations acting like them, to reallocate capital, reset governance, transform operations, manage risk, and choose optimal exits. For African private equity, control is not optional. It is the price of relevance.