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Hassanein Hiridjee has drawn roughly $730 million from development finance institutions since last year, funding a telecoms and power build-out that has carried a Madagascar family business into markets from Senegal to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The most recent came in June. Axian Telecom secured up to 170 million euros, about $184 million, from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to extend mobile and fibre networks in Senegal and Kenya. Days before that, Axian Energy closed a $60 million facility with Mauritius Commercial Bank, structured as a $40 million revolving line with a three-year tenor and $20 million in unfunded instruments.
In May the group signed a partnership worth up to 300 million euros with Proparco, the private sector arm of the French development agency, on the sidelines of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi. Axian Telecom had already taken $160 million from the African Development Bank the previous year.
From textiles to towers
The company began in the 1950s as a textile manufacturer called Hirimix. Hiridjee was born in Antananarivo in 1975 into a Khoja family, known locally as Karane, that had settled in Madagascar generations earlier. He left the Lycée Français de Tananarive in 1992, took a degree at ESCP in Paris and returned in 1997 to run the family firm.
The pivots came in sequence. Real estate in 1995. Energy in 2004, through Electricité de Madagascar and a stake in the fuel distributor Jovena. Telecoms the same year, with the purchase of Télécom Malagasy, the state operator, followed by the launch of Telma Mobile in 2006. Hiridjee and his brother Amin consolidated the holdings under the Axian name in 2015.
Buying what larger groups were selling
The continental expansion has run largely on assets multinationals wanted off their books. Axian took control of Togocom alongside Emerging Capital Partners in 2019. It acquired Millicom's Tanzanian operations, Tigo and Zantel, in 2022 with the businessman Rostam Aziz. GreenYellow has agreed to sell its Madagascar and Burkina Faso assets to the group.
Earlier this year Axian signed binding agreements to buy five Letshego banking subsidiaries across Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, adding regulated banking licences to a portfolio already spanning telecoms, energy, real estate and financial services.
Axian Telecom now operates in Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Togo, Comoros, Uganda, the DRC, Malawi, Réunion and Mayotte, selling mobile and fixed broadband under the Yas brand and mobile money through Mixx by Yas and MVola. Hiridjee has put the group sixth among African operators by subscriber numbers and third by infrastructure, with about 3,500 towers.
Group revenue reached $2.75 billion in 2024, up from roughly $2.5 billion the year before and about a tenth of that a decade ago. Axian Telecom alone booked $1.69 billion in 2025.
The energy target
Axian Energy runs 350 megawatts of installed renewable capacity backed by 77 megawatt-hours of storage. It is targeting 2 gigawatts by 2030, close to a sixfold increase. The Proparco agreement covers telecom networks, data centres, solar generation, mini-grids and electric vehicle charging infrastructure over three years.
The concentration of development money is not incidental. More than 600 million people on the continent lack reliable electricity, according to the International Energy Agency, and institutions such as the EBRD, Proparco and the AfDB price long-tenor infrastructure debt in markets where commercial lenders will not.
Boards and foundations
Hiridjee was elected to the board of Jumia Technologies in June, extending his reach in African technology beyond his own assets. He took the CEO of the Year award at the Africa CEO Forum in 2022.
He runs two philanthropic vehicles. The Axian Foundation works with vulnerable communities. Fondation H supports African contemporary art, holds public-utility status in Madagascar and operates exhibition spaces in Antananarivo and Paris.
Axian remains privately held and publishes no shareholder register, so there is no public valuation of the family's stake. Revenue and the pace of acquisition are the only measures available from outside.
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