ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire: Adenia, a leading private equity firm focused on growth opportunities in Africa, has finalized the sale of its 100% equity stake in OMOA Group to SPE Capital, a private equity firm focused on the Middle East and Africa.

Founded in 1999, OMOA is the leading integrated service provider for the payments industry in West and Central Francophone Africa. The sale of OMOA is the eighth and final exit from Adenia’s €96 million fund Adenia Capital (III), which is now fully liquidated.

OMOA provides a comprehensive range of services throughout the payment value chain, including ATM Installation, ATM maintenance and software solutions, as well as processing and card personalization. OMOA serves a wide range of banks and microfinance institutions across 11 countries, employing 150 people.

Since acquiring OMOA in 2012 through its Adenia Capital (III) fund, Adenia has implemented a series of strategic value creation initiatives to transition OMOA’s business model towards more value-added services. This included the upgrade of its ATM offering, the development of new maintenance capabilities and the establishment of a unique processing and card personalization center in Lomé, Togo, which meets the highest industry standards. Adenia also recruited a new senior management team to support this growth strategy, institutionalize the company’s governance, strengthen its processes and implement its ESG action plan.

“Today, OMOA benefits from strong recognition across its markets, not only as an ATM distributor, but as a strong strategic partner for banks through the provision of tailor-made solutions across the entire payment value chain,” said Christophe Scalbert, Partner at Adenia.

“Our journey with OMOA epitomizes what Adenia delivers through its majority ownership strategy: strong value creation through strategic repositioning, bold investment strategies and firm alignment with all stakeholders. We are confident that SPE will provide valuable support for OMOA’s talented teams as the company enters the next phase of its growth. We are also thrilled to complete the final exit from our third fund.”

“Embracing and supporting the digitalization of the African payment landscape has been key to protect and consolidate our leadership position,” said OMOA CEO Bart Willems. “We now define ourselves as a Full Digital Payment Provider with a broad range of digital payment services and new, innovative, multifunction ATMs in collaboration with our historic partner NCR Atleos. Adenia’s support has been instrumental to deliver on our strategy and we strongly believe SPE will help us bring OMOA to new heights.”

“This is the first investment from our newly raised private equity fund, SPE PEF III, LP, and we are looking forward to contributing to further enhance OMOA’s leadership position in the region and execute on its transformational growth plans,” said Stéphane Heuzé, Managing Partner at SPE.

“We are very excited to invest alongside Bart Willems and the entire team to consolidate OMOA’s position as a Full Digital Payment Provider, as well as support its ambitious development plans into payments processing, leveraging on the investments made over the last few years,” added Tarek Lababidi, Partner at SPE.

Adenia Partners was advised by Lazard (financial advisor), Asafo & Co (legal lead advisor), Deloitte (financial and tax advisors), Edgar, Dunn & Company (strategic advisor), CMS Francis Lefebvre (legal and tax advisor).

SPE Capital was advised by DLA Piper (legal lead advisor), FIME (strategic advisor), KPMG (financial and tax advisors), IBIS (ESG advisor), Deloitte (BI advisor), and AXA Climate (Climate advisor).