South Africa’s largest private education operator is deepening its bet on classroom automation. JSE-listed Advtech Limited has acquired a 25 percent stake in edtech startup MathU, locking down exclusive rights to the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence tools alongside a designated seat on its board of directors, the group said Wednesday.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal formalizes a working relationship in place since 2023. Advtech already deploys MathU’s software across its private schools under the Advlearn banner, tailoring high school math and science curriculums. Group executives plan to roll out an English language module across campuses shortly.

Classroom automation drives growth

For Pretoria-based MathU, the equity tie-up provides instant scale and dependable corporate distribution. CEO WA Burger said backing from the continent’s premier education provider will accelerate product development. The venture also funds MathU Society, a non-profit arm supplying subsidized stem tutoring to public school pupils in marginalized townships.

Advtech CEO Geoff Whyte framed the minority investment as a defensive play to protect market share against nimble online competitors. Linking traditional classroom teaching with predictive machine learning algorithms allows teachers to spot student comprehension gaps early, Whyte said, creating a scalable model across the company’s fast-expanding pan-African network.

Advtech has spent three decades assembling an education empire spanning 118 campuses across South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, and Ethiopia. Its flagship brands include Crawford International, Emeris, and IIE Rosebank College. Management has increasingly turned to programmatic mergers and acquisitions to capture fragmented segments across sub-Saharan Africa’s private learning market.

Expansion eyes Neurodivergent market

The edtech investment caps an aggressive month of capital allocation. Just last week, Advtech closed an asset purchase of the former St George’s School real estate in Gqeberha. The Eastern Cape property will house a new regional campus for The Bridge School, serving a surging demographic of neurodivergent children.

The St George’s Park facility will open in January 2028, scaling capacity up to 450 pupils. It marks the group’s third specialized school campus providing clinical therapy, sensory-friendly spaces, and low student-to-teacher ratios. Advtech will kick off site renovations next year while hiring specialized educators across the Eastern Cape.

Heavy expansion spending follows a blowout run on the Johannesburg bourse. Advtech posted a 16 percent jump in normalized interim earnings to R716.5 million ($44.75 million) for the six months through June. Group revenue rose 8 percent to R5.06 billion ($316 million), lifting operating margin to 22 percent.

Margins widen across campuses

Profitability gained ground thanks to robust student headcount gains despite persistent consumer headwinds in South Africa. Total group enrollments climbed 13 percent to 119,197 students over the period. Tertiary admissions led the surge with a 19 percent gain to 71,467, while baseline primary and secondary schools advanced 5 percent to 47,730.

With balance sheet leverage low and cash conversion steady, Advtech is pairing physical real estate buys with selective equity stakes in software providers. Integrating digital instruction directly into physical classrooms gives the education heavyweight pricing power, keeping parents locked into its ecosystem from preschool through university degrees.