Private equity firms capitalise on demand for healthcare in Africa
PRIVATE-EQUITY companies are taking advantage of a surge in demand for health-care products in Africa to invest in a market that’s suffering from government underfunding.Abraaj Group invested $145m to improve facilities and medical equipment at hospitals and clinics in Tunisia and Egypt, with a similar amount now being planned south of the Sahara. London-based Development Partners International may invest as much as $150m in health-care assets for its second fund in Africa over the next three to four years. The fund, which closed in April last year, took DPI’s assets in the region to $1.1bn."We bought into the growth story," said Sofiane Lahmar, a partner at DPI, which has two pan-African private-equity funds. "That’s about macroeconomic trends, the high level of population growth, the aging and urbanisation of the population that creates more need for pharmaceutical products, and that there are more complex diseases."Non-cyclicalHealth-care spending in Africa is expected to grow ab...
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