Amethis Finance, an investment vehicle dedicated to Africa with a total investment capacity of €400m, has acquired a minority equity stake in HMAO Group, thus entering West Africa’s healthcare market.

Laurent Demey, Managing Partner of Amethis, said: “With this tenth equity investment, Amethis, along with the very experienced management team, participates to the improvement and enlargement of the healthcare offer in Côte d’Ivoire and the sub-region.”

“Indeed, the medical offer remains largely insufficient compared to the population’s needs,” he added.

HMAO is a group composed of clinics and laboratories and is the leader in the healthcare market in the region.

HMAO owns six clinics, a dental clinic and a laboratory: Polyclinique GMP, which was the first medical facility in the group; Polyclinique Internationale de l’Indénié; Polyclinique des deux Plateaux; Polyclinique des Grâces; Clinique des Roches in San Pedro; Polyclinique du Centre in Bouaké, a diagnostic center in Treichville and Franchey d’Esperey; and a dental clinic located in Abidjan.

Through this transaction, Amethis supports the management’s take-over of the Group which was previously owned by Saham.

Saham operates from Morocco all over the continent in the insurance, offshoring, real estate, education sectors as well as in the health sector through its subsidiary Meden Healthcare.

The group manages almost 250 beds and is therefore the biggest market player in the healthcare sector in Côte d’Ivoire.

HMAO’s growth has been sponsored and supported by Saham, the majority shareholder since 2014.

In less than two years, Saham led an ambitious transformation of HMAO through acquisitions, internal reorganization and the upgrading of the technical facilities, creating a unique asset in West Africa.

Saham’s geographical redeployment in North Africa in the healthcare segment offered to Amethis the opportunity to take a minority ownership alongside the management and pursue the development and geographical expansion of the group.

Amethis will support the management in the implementation of an ambitious development strategy: consolidation and optimization of the existing network (capacity extension, increase in the number of beds, modernization of the equipment, namely radiology and function tests); launch and development of new offers (radiotherapy); regional expansion with the acquisition of medical facilities in the neighboring countries.

The group’s objective is to build an integrated network thus allowing cost-optimizations and centralized functions.

The group will be organized as a medical hub and will be on the cutting-edge of medical technology and service.

“Amethis is very proud to support HMAO in this new phase of its development as well as the ambition of the management to build the healthcare sector’s leader in Francophone Africa,” said Demey.

Amethis’s other investments in Côte d’Ivoire include Compagnie de Distribution de Côte d’Ivoire (CDCI), a leading food distribution company; PétroIvoire, and Ivorian distributor of oil and gas products; and NSIA, an insurance group in Francophone Africa, which also owns and operates the third largest banking institution in Côte d’Ivoire.