South African renewable energy firm SolarAfrica has completed a secondary transaction that consolidates its control over a portfolio of commercial and industrial (C&I) solar and battery storage assets, as impact investor Inspired Evolution exits through a R635 million ($39m) mezzanine financing package arranged by Vantage Capital and co-investor Greenpoint Capital.
The deal transfers full ownership of Commercial Energy South Africa (CESA) — a holding company for SolarAfrica’s C&I rooftop and battery storage assets — to SolarAfrica itself, which previously shared that stake with Inspired Evolution. CESA currently holds approximately 90MW of capacity spread across 134 sites, all of which are operated and managed by SolarAfrica.
The Transaction
Vantage Capital, which describes itself as Africa’s largest mezzanine debt fund manager, structured the financing as a mezzanine facility — a hybrid instrument sitting between senior debt and equity in the capital stack. The firm co-invested alongside Greenpoint Capital to provide the liquidity needed for Inspired Evolution’s exit.
Mezzanine finance has become an increasingly common tool in South Africa’s private energy sector, where project developers often need flexible, longer-dated capital that dilutes existing shareholders less than a straight equity raise.
“This transaction reflects our conviction in distributed energy infrastructure and the strength of SolarAfrica’s platform,” said Roshal Ramdenee, Partner at Vantage Capital. “CESA’s contracted C&I solar and battery portfolio provides predictable cash flows and supports South Africa’s shift to reliable and sustainable power.”
Warren van der Merwe, Managing Partner at Vantage Capital, noted that the firm had previously provided senior debt to renewable energy projects through its GreenX division, and described the deal as an example of mezzanine capital’s emerging role in the sector. “We are pleased to showcase how mezzanine finance can play a part in the rapidly evolving power sector,” he said.
For Greenpoint Capital, the transaction follows years of monitoring SolarAfrica’s trajectory. “We are pleased to have finalised this transaction in support of the SolarAfrica team, whose progress we have tracked over many years,” said Nic van Zyl, CIO at Greenpoint Capital.
What SolarAfrica Gets Out of It
For SolarAfrica, the buyout is strategic as much as financial. The Pretoria-based company, founded in 2011, now has unencumbered control of a contracted, cash-generating asset base — a foundation it says will give it the operational freedom to layer on new services.
“Taking full control of the portfolio means we can continue to innovate by bringing more renewable energy solutions, such as electricity wheeling, to customers,” said Charl Alheit, CIO at SolarAfrica. “This underscores our commitment to making cheaper, greener power more accessible to C&I businesses.”
SolarAfrica currently claims a track record of approximately 343MW of funded solar projects in Southern Africa, with a further 1.14GW in rollout, and has been named African Solar Company of the Year by the Africa Solar Industry Association in both 2021 and 2023. Its service offering spans solar-PV, battery storage, energy trading, electricity wheeling, and gas-to-power solutions.
From Rooftops to the Grid: SolarAfrica’s Strategic Pivot
The CESA buyout comes as SolarAfrica is simultaneously executing a broader transition in its business model — one that takes it beyond on-site rooftop installations toward utility-scale, grid-wheeled power.
Last month, the company reached financial close on a R1.5 billion ($94m) debt package to fund SunCentral 2, a 114MW solar project in the Northern Cape, with financing provided by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) and Investec. The deal follows the financial close of SunCentral 1 in late 2024 and positions SolarAfrica to begin delivering first power from the SunCentral cluster in 2026.
The “wheeling” model — generating electricity at high-yield remote locations and transmitting it across the national grid to industrial customers — represents a meaningful departure from the rooftop solar model that has defined the C&I sector for the past decade. Where rooftop solar is constrained by physical space and is inherently intermittent, wheeling allows commercial offtakers to source a higher proportion of their total energy needs from renewables under long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), without incurring upfront capital expenditure.
SolarAfrica is also investing a portion of the SunCentral 2 funding into a Main Transmission Substation (MTS) engineered to handle up to 2GW of power evacuation — a piece of infrastructure that both de-risks future phases of SunCentral and creates a potential connection point for third-party renewable generators. The company’s total development pipeline stands at approximately 3GW.
Broader Context: Private Capital Fills a Public Void
The CESA transaction and the SunCentral financing rounds are individual deals, but they are also part of a structural shift in how South Africa powers its commercial sector. Eskom, the state utility, has spent years unable to supply reliable baseload power, while its transmission network was not designed to accommodate decentralised, remote generation at scale. As the government has progressively liberalised regulations on private generation, firms like SolarAfrica have moved from operating at the margins of the energy system to providing infrastructure that industrial customers increasingly depend on.
That dynamic creates both opportunity and risk. On one side, there is a deep and growing market of businesses prepared to sign long-term PPAs with private developers. On the other, the commercial viability of wheeling models remains linked to grid stability and regulatory continuity — factors outside any private developer’s control.
SolarAfrica’s decision to fund its own transmission substation connection is in part an acknowledgement of that constraint: to sell power reliably, it must help ensure the infrastructure exists to carry it.
Vantage Capital Group was established in 2001 and has raised approximately US$1.6 billion across seven mezzanine and renewable energy debt funds. Its portfolio spans over 66 investments across more than a dozen African markets.