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Liquid Intelligent Technologies has raised $410 million in fresh funding from a group of development finance institutions, giving the African telecoms and digital infrastructure provider new firepower to strengthen its balance sheet and fund expansion.
Its parent company, Cassava Technologies, is also stepping in with an additional $195 million equity injection. Together, the package comes to about $605 million, one of the group’s most significant recapitalisation efforts in recent years.
The announcement follows the full repayment of Liquid’s rand denominated term loan and its US dollar revolving credit facility. The repayments are part of a broader cleanup of the company’s debt profile, aimed at improving liquidity and reducing leverage as it prepares for its next growth phase.
Hardy Pemhiwa, group CEO of Cassava Technologies, said the transactions, along with the recent sale of a minority stake in a South African data centre subsidiary, represent a deliberate effort to reinforce the company’s capital structure.
The refinancing and equity injection sit within a wider recapitalisation strategy. That plan has included the disposal of an undisclosed stake in Liquid and the sale of a minority interest in Africa Data Centres, another Cassava subsidiary. Stanlib, a unit of Standard Bank Group, acquired the ADC stake after receiving unconditional approval from South Africa’s Competition Commission in January.
By unlocking value from its data centre assets, Cassava has been able to raise additional capital while still retaining strategic control of key infrastructure.
Liquid has not disclosed the detailed terms of the new credit facilities, which include a mix of rand and dollar denominated loans. What is clear, however, is the timing. Africa’s digital infrastructure operators are facing rising capital demands as the continent’s appetite for connectivity continues to grow.
There is increasing pressure to extend fibre networks, expand data centre capacity and invest in cloud and edge computing infrastructure. Enterprise and wholesale customers are also demanding higher capacity and more reliable connectivity. Much of this growth is being fuelled by the rapid shift to cloud services, the expansion of mobile broadband, artificial intelligence workloads and deeper digital adoption across both public and private sectors.
Pemhiwa said the strengthened financial position gives the group greater flexibility to scale its operations across the continent.
Liquid operates one of the largest independent fibre networks in Africa, alongside a growing portfolio of data centres and cloud infrastructure. With its balance sheet now bolstered, the company is positioning itself to capture a larger share of the continent’s accelerating digital transformation.
