Old Mutual, a Financial services group is positioning itself to expand its presence in South Africa’s fibre and digital infrastructure market through its African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) fund.
AIIM, which has built a significant portfolio of telecommunications assets, is assessing a potential merger between its fibre businesses Octotel and MetroFibre. The combination could create a larger fibre infrastructure company capable of competing more directly with established operators such as Vumatel and Openserve.
Octotel and MetroFibre have separately confirmed that discussions around a potential merger are being assessed. AIIM currently owns 100% of Octotel and holds a 37% stake in MetroFibre, making it the company’s largest shareholder.
The potential combination forms part of AIIM’s broader strategy to expand its exposure to telecommunications and digital infrastructure in South Africa, bringing two established fibre businesses under a potentially larger operating structure.
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Alongside its fibre investments, AIIM has received approval from the Competition Tribunal to acquire a 50% stake in Vantage Data Centers’ JNB11 facility in Centurion. The JNB11 transaction will give AIIM an interest in both the physical infrastructure and operations of the data centre through its acquisition of shares in Vantage’s JNB11 property and operating companies.
JNB11 was the first data centre developed by international hyperscale operator Vantage in South Africa. Construction began in 2021 as part of Vantage’s planned R15-billion Waterfall City campus, which is designed to support large-scale digital infrastructure requirements.
The two-storey JNB11 facility was designed to provide 16MW of critical IT capacity across 12,000 square metres. It forms part of a three-data-centre campus developed in partnership with Attacq, which retains a 50% interest in the facility.
The data-centre investment complements AIIM’s existing telecommunications portfolio and reflects the growing importance of fibre networks and data centres as South Africa’s demand for digital infrastructure increases.
With interests spanning fibre connectivity and data-centre infrastructure, AIIM is expanding its role in the digital infrastructure market while evaluating opportunities to consolidate its fibre assets through a potential Octotel-MetroFibre combination.
