Investment & Project Development
ICA invests in and develops projects in the digital infrastructure sector in Africa. We bring together highly qualified and experienced teams and financial resources to transform traditional mobile operators from voice focussed businesses to leading edge digital service providers.
ICA is well versed in the various aspects of developing telecom and digital infrastructure projects such as regulatory and spectrum issues, interconnect agreements and large-scale network roll-out in challenging environments. The group has implemented a number of nationwide projects in the energy sector as well as in digital infrastructure.
Infrastructure Financing
Project finance techniques such as special purpose vehicles and ring-fenced revenues offer many advantages. The best practice for the design and risk mitigation of infrastructure projects is a non-recourse project finance approach. The annual assessment of project finance loans by Moody’s Investors Service documents the superior performance of African project finance loans, with defaults of African infrastructure projects from 1983 to 2017 averaging 5.5%, a lower default rate than Latin America (12.9%), Asia (8.8%), Eastern Europe (8.6%), North America (7.6%), and Western Europe (5.9%) (Moody’s Investor Service, 2019[40]).
Sourcing & Supply Chain
Supply chain risks are not just managed through technical means; they rely on establishing and sustaining a relationship between members of the supply chain. We have moved beyond the days when we were concerned mostly with identifying and integrating "black-box" parts to a concern with more integrated systems with similarly integrated supply chains and dependencies. The ability to maintain production schedules also requires this same relationship management. Through these efforts, companies in the telecommunications sector will have more insight into the risks and benefits provided by the suppliers