How anchor buyers are reviving Africa’s telecom bond market

Africa’s telecom bond market has spent a lot of the previous decade caught between promise and notion. On one hand, demand for connectivity has surged, pushed by inhabitants development, urbanisation, data-hungry customers and the regular transition from 3G to 4G and now 5G. However, world buyers have typically considered African telecom debt by a lens of danger. 

Between 2021 and 2025, nonetheless, the narrative shifted extra decisively. Throughout the continent, telecom operators returned to the bond market in measurement, refinancing maturing obligations and elevating recent capital for infrastructure enlargement. 

Whereas no single determine captures Africa’s complete telecom bond exercise, sector stories and landmark transactions counsel that a number of billion {dollars} have been raised by company bonds and structured debt lately. MTN Nigeria pioneered the area in 2018 with a ₦200 billion ($146 million) bond programme aimed toward diversifying funding sources and managing native forex publicity.

Nevertheless, different operators largely stayed on the sidelines till 2022, when Mauritius-based Axian Telecom issued a $460 million bond, signalling a renewed curiosity within the continent’s telecom debt market.

In July 2025, Axian Telecom once more issued a $600 million bond to scale infrastructure throughout Madagascar, Tanzania and Togo. The deal was twice oversubscribed, attracting an order e-book of greater than $1.3 billion, a transparent sign that investor urge for food for African digital infrastructure had strengthened. 

In the meantime, IHS Towers remained lively in debt markets, reporting complete indebtedness of roughly $3.9 billion as of mid-2025 whereas refinancing high-cost notes and getting ready for maturities in 2026 and 2027.

These transactions counsel that Africa’s telecom bond market is reopening in earnest. 

On the centre of this revival is a well-known however typically underestimated participant: the anchor investor. Sometimes, a significant institutional participant, comparable to a pension fund, mutual fund, or insurance coverage firm, an anchor investor commits to buying a considerable block of securities forward of an IPO, serving to to stabilise demand and construct market confidence.

This issues as a result of the telecom bond market, the place corporations elevate debt from buyers by issuing tradable securities, offers the long-term, dependable capital required to construct digital infrastructure at scale. 

Fibre networks, towers, information centres and 5G deployments demand heavy upfront funding that far exceeds what operators can fund from income alone. When the bond market works effectively, it offers operators entry to inexpensive financing for community enlargement, spectrum acquisition and rural protection. 

“Bonds stay one of the crucial underused however strategic financing instruments in telecoms,” stated Rotimi Akapo, Accomplice and head of Telecommunications, Media and Expertise (TMT), Advocaat Regulation Observe. “They permit operators to lift long-term capital at scale, match funding to the lifetime of community infrastructure, and increase their networks and infrastructure with out diluting possession. In rising markets, a functioning telecom bond market is usually a actual spine for financing the digital financial system.”

Reframing the funding narrative

A standard false impression about Africa’s digital infrastructure is that the continent suffers from a continual lack of capital. 

Folatomi Fayemi, Funding Specialist at Ninety One, which manages the Rising Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund (EAAIF), stated the difficulty is much less concerning the absolute availability of funding and extra about construction, confidence and signalling. EAAIF was the anchor investor within the Axian Telecom $600 million bond difficulty. 

“There might be slight misconceptions as to the provision of funding due to the quantity of demand that’s required,” he stated. “There may be funding that’s coming. And there’s at all times going to be extra funding due to the infrastructure divide we now have on the continent. The calls for continue to grow; they don’t decelerate. You simply hold needing to deploy.”

Two of the world’s ten largest telecom infrastructure corporations by scale are African-focused tower companies. IHS Towers and Helios Towers are each listed corporations which have constructed companies centred overwhelmingly on Africa’s connectivity wants. 

In 2024 alone, IHS raised greater than $1 billion in bonds, whereas Helios Towers executed a equally giant issuance. In 2025, these companies continued reshaping their steadiness sheets, refinancing debt and lengthening maturities.

“These are companies which might be elevating giant bonds,” Fayemi stated. “You’re speaking about roughly $1.8 billion-plus going into two corporations targeted totally on connectivity throughout Africa.” EAAIF anchored the IHS Towers and Helios’ mixed over $1.8 billion bond issuances in 2024.

For Fayemi, this scale underscores an essential shift: telecom infrastructure in Africa is more and more seen as a development story anchored in demographic fundamentals.

“Inhabitants development issues,” he stated. “While you step again and take a look at markets like Nigeria, the place you have already got three or 4 operators, it’s not about including extra gamers. It’s about assembly rising demand. For these companies, that is development.”

The rise of specialisation

One structural shift underpinning renewed investor confidence is the shift away from vertically built-in telecom operators towards specialised infrastructure suppliers. 

Globally, cellular operators are shifting away from proudly owning each a part of their networks. Towers, fibre, information centres and associated companies are actually typically run by specialist corporations that may make investments and function extra effectively. This has led many operators to promote their tower property to TowerCos to unlock capital and cut back upkeep prices.

Vodafone moved 55,000 websites into Vantage Towers, Deutsche Telekom grouped its towers beneath DFMG, and U.S. carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Cellular bought giant portfolios to American Tower and Crown Fortress. Zain adopted a sale-and-leaseback mannequin with IHS Towers, whereas Telefónica bought towers to KKR and partnered with American Tower.

Africa follows the identical trajectory. Tower corporations deal with website acquisition and upkeep. Fibre operators put money into long-haul and metro networks. Information centre corporations specialize in energy redundancy and cooling techniques. This specialisation improves capital allocation and creates clearer income visibility.

For bond buyers, readability issues. Telecom infrastructure property sometimes generate predictable, long-term money flows backed by multi-year contracts with cellular operators. That predictability aligns effectively with institutional buyers looking for length and yield.

In 2025, this readability coincided with a broader financing pivot. Throughout Africa’s tech and telecom ecosystem, debt accounted for 41% of complete funding, reaching a file $1.6 billion, a 63% enhance from 2024, based mostly on the 2025 Partech Africa Tech VC Report. 

A number of mega-deals exceeding $100 million have been structured as debt somewhat than fairness. Even corporations working on the intersection of telecom and fintech, comparable to Senegal’s Wave, secured $137 million in debt financing in July 2025 to increase cellular cash operations.

Relatively than diluting fairness in risky valuation environments, operators more and more turned to structured borrowing.

Why anchor buyers matter

In risk-averse markets, notably throughout world volatility, the presence of a reputable anchor investor can decide whether or not a deal succeeds. 

“It’s tremendous essential,” Fayemi stated of the signalling position. “You may have good companies in Africa. The world must know that you’ve good companies in Africa. These companies have to have entry to the market.”

Nevertheless, the native debt surroundings nonetheless has limitations, particularly in Nigeria.

Right here, Wole Adetuyi of Swift Phone Networks, an web service supplier, presents an essential counterweight to the optimistic narrative. Whereas bonds are an choice, he cautions that solely a small subset of telecom operators can realistically entry that market.

“The bond choice is accessible, though you will need to notice that solely investment-grade corporations can elevate bonds in Nigeria simply (BBB ranking and above),” Adetuyi stated. “As well as, the regulatory necessities for issuing a bond or some other debt devices are fairly excessive.”

He additionally notes that almost all Nigerian telecom operators are usually not listed, which shuts them out of typical public-debt avenues.

“Given that almost all Telcos aren’t listed on an trade, the one choice to lift debt publicly could be by the issuance of business paper (CP),” he defined. “However there’s doubt that the CP market has the depth to completely subscribe to a multi-million-dollar notice issuance.”

For that motive, Adetuyi argues that various buildings could also be extra sensible.

“For me, mezzanine financing by a private-equity fundraise could be simpler, frankly.”

Really useful learn: MTN Group strikes to amass IHS Towers

Blended finance as catalyst

Anchor investing in African telecom bonds is usually tied to blended finance buildings. EAAIF adopts this mannequin.

“We handle $1.6 billion in property,” Fayemi defined. “About $1.3 billion is deployed. We’re a blended finance car.”

The fund combines first-loss fairness from growth companions, together with the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden and different European governments, with debt raised from growth finance establishments and personal institutional buyers comparable to Allianz, Customary Financial institution and Absa.

“Many of the capital is definitely debt,” Fayemi stated. “We need to put money into impactful initiatives which might be sturdy and sustainable, and likewise earn a return for our buyers. Influence issues in the beginning.”

This construction permits EAAIF to crowd in personal capital whereas sustaining business self-discipline, enabling it to behave as an anchor on telecom bonds and assist long-term financing buildings.

Few examples illustrate the catalytic position of anchors higher than Sonatel (Société Nationale des Télécommunications du Sénégal), a telecom operator in Senegal. EAAIF anchored the corporate’s first bond issuance in 2014. A decade later, it supported West Africa’s first digital infrastructure securitisation.

“That was truly the primary digital securitisation in West African markets,” Fayemi stated. “What was essential there was crowding in not solely institutional buyers, but additionally the native market.”

Balancing forex publicity

Forex administration is likely one of the most advanced challenges in telecom financing. Most community tools is priced in {dollars} or euros, which means operators should borrow in exhausting forex. However extreme reliance on foreign-currency debt exposes corporations to exchange-rate swings, which might rapidly erode profitability.

This danger grew to become painfully clear in the course of the 2024–2025 “Naira Shock.” Following Nigeria’s exchange-rate unification in 2023, the worth of dollar-denominated liabilities surged. MTN Nigeria posted its first-ever loss, recording ₦740 billion ($816 million) in FX losses, whereas Airtel Africa fell from a $750 million revenue to an $89 million loss on account of forex devaluations in Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya. 

Operators responded by localising their debt: by September 2025, MTN Nigeria had shifted 95% of its working debt into naira, slicing internet debt from ₦719.5 billion ($525.7 million) to ₦171 billion ($124.9 million), whereas Airtel repaid $702 million in foreign-currency debt. 

The trade-off is that native debt reduces forex danger however comes at a better price, with Airtel’s efficient rate of interest rising from 10.1% to 13%.

The 2025 refinancing wave displays rising monetary sophistication. MTN Nigeria’s local-currency programme hedges naira revenues, whereas CFA franc markets, with their euro pegs, assist cut back forex mismatch danger. Massive listed companies, together with Helios Towers, proceed to entry world markets whereas selectively tapping native funding to handle publicity.

Anchor buyers play a essential position on this balancing act, offering credibility and capital that assist each hard-currency and home transactions. Their involvement helps stabilise offers, reassure markets, and guarantee operators can handle forex danger with out compromising long-term funding in infrastructure.

A market reopening

Africa’s telecom bond market might not change into risk-free as macroeconomic volatility and regulatory shifts will stay fixed. However 2025 marked a turning level. Oversubscribed issuances, file debt funding throughout the tech and telecom ecosystem, and multi-hundred-million-dollar raises by corporations comparable to Axian Telecom and MTN Nigeria replicate renewed confidence.

Anchor buyers are central to that evolution. By absorbing early danger, structuring transactions and signalling credibility, they’re serving to bridge Africa’s connectivity ambitions with world capital markets.

Over time, as monitor information deepen and native markets strengthen, reliance on anchors might diminish. However for now, they continue to be a decisive drive, not merely reviving Africa’s telecom bond market, however reinforcing the monetary structure underpinning the continent’s digital enlargement.