What Makes ECP Unique
ECP draws on 20+ years of private equity investing experience in Africa and has completed over 70 transactions and nearly 60 full exits. Key elements of ECP’s investment approach aim to deliver attractive risk-managed returns to investors.
Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) is one of the oldest and largest private equity firms established in 1999 to invest in high-growth companies in Africa and related markets. ECP’s investments seek to achieve significant capital appreciation by making control or influential minority investments in portfolio of companies that operate primarily in industries that capitalize on the rapidly growing domestic consumer and business demand such as telecommunications, financial services, consumer products & services and infrastructure & logistics sectors. ECP’s funds focus on investing in businesses with exceptional growth prospects to support both organic and acquisition-led growth through the enhancement of the product offerings and the expansion of their geographic footprint regionally, internationally and globally.
The Firm has raised in excess of $3.4 billion for investment in Africa across four pan-African funds, four regional funds, and various co-investment vehicles. The capital has been invested in 73 different African companies that operate throughout the Continent. In addition, ECP has achieved 57 full exits and 2 partial exits to date, returning $1.7 billion to investors. At the height of operations, the Firm built a cohesive team with a strong mix of operational, consulting, financial and legal experience operating across seven offices in the United States, Europe and Africa. Today the firm maintains a headquarters in Washington, DC, with affiliated offices in Abidjan, Nairobi and Johannesburg.
In addition to investment experience, ECP also has built an institutional corporate organization including dedicated investor relations, legal, finance and ESG functions. Together, they enable ECP to meet leading international standards of operations. ECP is registered as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and produces US GAAP-compliant financial reports audited by Deloitte and EVCA and ILPA-compliant quarterly reports. In addition, ECP adheres to international environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) standards and is a signatory to the UN Principles of Responsible Investing (“UNPRI”).
An On-the-Ground Team
Central to ECP’s approach is our extensive Africa-based team whose experience and contacts provide us the market insights and relationships critical to our ability to identify and execute investments and to add value to portfolio companies. Africa is a huge and diverse continent, and covering it effectively requires a significant human resource investment. Over 20 years, ECP has developed the largest on-the-ground private equity investment team in Africa with four offices and diverse staff in hub economies throughout the continent covering the following regions:
- Francophone West Africa (Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire)
- East Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
- Southern Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa)
Focused Investment Themes
ECP seeks to identify opportunities that will benefit from the fundamental, long-term structural demographic and economic shifts driving Africa’s growth. This could entail the replication of an investment in a new geography, such as our series of Mobile Network Operator (MNO) investments, or could originate from insights gleaned from our many portfolio companies. For example, following ECP’s series of MNO investments and our participation on the boards of several African MNOs, ECP identified when the roll-out of data networks would drive demand for outsourced telecommunications infrastructure, leading to our investment in a prominent mobile communications infrastructure company. The ECP team’s local presence also enables us to identify new growth trends early, such as the growth in quick service and casual dining restaurants, and to position ECP to invest in the emerging market leaders.
Top-Down Research & Target Identification
Once we have identified a potential investment theme, the ECP team conducts thorough research to understand key growth drivers and factors in more detail, learn lessons from other markets, and assess ECP’s capacity to add value to the target companies. ECP also maps the market to identify and evaluate the suitability of possible target companies for an ECP investment.
Differentiated Access
Our on-the-ground team enables us to build the relationships, trust, and mutual understanding required to execute our proactive thesis-driven investment strategy. Once we have identified the companies with which we want to work, we use our network and reputation to secure positive introductions to the shareholders and management of the target companies in order to discuss the ways in which an investment from ECP could enhance the target company’s growth prospects and create value for all parties.
Strategic Value Creation
There are two levels to ECP’s approach to value creation. The first level seeks to increase value and exit preparedness by implementing good governance processes, enforcing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, ensuring timely performance reporting, and introducing management incentive plans. These initiatives improve financial and operational control of the business, enhance sustainability, and ensure alignment of interests with management to drive value creation.
At a more fundamental level, ECP seeks to identify, in due diligence and afterwards, the actions required to enable the target company to deliver transformative growth and create outperformance. From our experience, companies are often prevented from realizing their full potential by their inability to upgrade management, raise funding, and execute key strategic acquisitions. Over its 19 years of investment experience, ECP has developed significant expertise in all three areas: identifying and attracting top-caliber management to strengthen key operational functions and facilitate company expansion; driving both debt and equity fundraising for portfolio companies; and, where relevant, supporting portfolio companies in the execution of transformative acquisitions to consolidate market position and achieve economies of scale.