Enabling Essential Goods & Services
Expanding inclusive access to financial services, healthcare, food, education and digital connectivity for underserved communities.
Essential goods and services in Africa
Africa's population now exceeds 1.5 billion and is the fastest growing globally. By 2050, it is expected to reach 2.5 billion - representing a quarter of the global population. Yet access to essential goods and services remains limited for many people across Africa. Approximately 40% of Sub-Saharan Africa's population is unbanked. Insurance penetration sits at ~3.5% of GDP, against ~7% globally. Healthcare infrastructure, digital connectivity, education and food systems remain uneven across markets.
Meeting this demand requires scalable businesses that improve the availability, affordability, quality, and reliability of essential goods and services. This creates an opportunity for businesses to meet growing demand across Africa, while unlocking commercial value and driving business growth.
Case studies
Case Study: Helios Towers
Enabling access to digital connectivity across African markets
Investment date
November 2009
Africa’s growing population is increasing demand for reliable digital infrastructure, as connectivity increasingly serves as a gateway to essential pillars of socio-economic participation.
Yet mobile network expansion was historically constrained by an operator-owned tower model, which created duplication, higher costs, and slower rollout, particularly in underserved areas.
In 2009, Helios established Helios Towers to address this bottleneck through a shared infrastructure model that enabled faster, more cost-effective network expansion. This supported telecommunication companies as they scaled in African markets and helped expand digital connectivity at scale, including to last mile populations.
Delivering Growth with Impact at Helios Towers
150m+
people with improved digital connectivity
99.99%
network site uptime including on off-grid sites
10k
direct and indirect jobs created
1.5k
solar-powered sites deployed across different markets
