The Carlyle Group has announced its acquisition of Uganda's Abacus, a pharmaceutical company. "The Carlyle Group announces that it has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in AK Life Sciences (Abacus)," Carlyle wrote.
There were no Financial terms disclosed. But, the Global Asset Manager pointed out that the deal was made by its Africa-focused fund. "Equity for the transaction came from Carlyle Sub-Saharan Africa Fund (CSSAF)."
Established in 2012 with $698 million, CSSAF has offices in Johannesburg and Lagos.
The fund has so far invested over $550 million in energy, financial services, TMT, retail, logistics and more. The countries of focus are; South Africa, Gabon, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, DRC and now Uganda.
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Founded in 1995, Abacus is a distributor of pharmaceutical products in East Africa. It is also a manufacturer of parenterals (IV fluids, ear, eye, and nose drops) in Uganda.
The company has various product offerings. These range from mission-critical parenterals to branded generics for chronic therapeutic areas such as oncology, diabetes and cardiovascular. It also has a distribution network with wholesale branches across Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, and Kenya.
According to Ramesh Babu, co-founder, and MD, Abacus has over 800 employees across East Africa.
In August, CiplaQCi listed on Uganda's Security Exchange at a valuation of $12.5 million as the PE funds like TLG and CapitalWorks sought an exit. While Guardian Health, a chain of pharmacies across Uganda, also took in investment to the tune of $3 million from an unnamed PE fund mid last year.
This latest development, thus, reflects a growing interest in Uganda's pharmaceutical industry.