Africa in sights of Swiss hospitality education as it buys Invictus majority

Swiss-based hospitality education provider Sommet has bought a majority stake in Invictus Education Group, alongside Invictus’s historical shareholders, who include Investec and Lambert Capital, for an undisclosed sum.

This will enable Invictus to establish a substantial footprint in Africa in the next five years while adding senior professional qualifications to Invictus’s offering in SA.

Invictus has trained and educated more than 50,000 students and employees in accredited programmes since its inception in 2014. Its four brands include International Hotel School (IHS), IHS Gaming, Summit and SAE Institute Africa.

It delivers education and training in hospitality, culinary arts, casino gaming, retail food services and creative media, across eight SA campuses. It also hosts online learning platforms in SA and Australia.

SAE Institute Africa is a fastgrowing education company focused on creative media education. It offers degrees and higher certificates in film production, sound engineering, animation and gaming. With the acquisition, Swiss group Sommet Education will increase its number of campuses to 17 from nine and increase its capacity to 9,000 from 6,000 students.

Sommet’s campuses are in Switzerland, France, Spain, the UK and China. The acquisition will also help to curb the shortage of hospitality workers and professionals in SA.

“The Sommet Education growth strategy leverages on acquisitions of local, regional and international hospitality education brands as well as adjacent and complementary business lines,” Sommet Education CEO Benoît-Etienne Domenget said.

“Together with Invictus Education Group we will accelerate our development plan in Africa aiming for 20 campuses throughout Africa in the medium-term,” said Domenget. Hotels and resorts were already recovering as certain countries had achieved high levels of vaccination against Covid-19. The deal will enable Invictus to expand its bachelor’s degree offering. IHS will benefit from the development of a culinary and pastry arts portfolio of programmes, thanks to Sommet’s École Ducasse school’s support.

The first project developed together by Invictus and Sommet is an IHS campus under construction in Benoni. It will be followed by other campuses in Nelspruit, Potchefstroom and Gqeberha. A new SAE campus will be built in Pretoria. Two hotel school campuses are planned for Nairobi, opening in 2023 and 2024.

Invictus founder and CEO Mike Lambert said Sommet Education was an ideal international partner, which it needed to support its vision and expansion plan, which can now be accelerated across SA and sub-Sahara.

“This alliance also means that we will be able to provide our students with access to a worldwide network of alumni and industry partners with diversified learning paths and careers, with even more opportunity to learn and thrive internationally,” he said.

WE WILL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE OUR STUDENTS WITH … DIVERSIFIED LEARNING PATHS AND CAREERS