Naspers
The South African Giant Hiding in Plain Sight
No, I did not put an incorrect logo!
Some companies announce their dominance. Others let the numbers do the talking. Naspers is the latter. A behemoth that lurks beneath the surface, rarely in the public consciousness, yet woven into the fabric of global technology. It is South Africa’s most valuable company, yet most South Africans don’t know what it actually does. Its existence is a masterclass in the art of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
From Propaganda to Profit
Naspers was born in 1915 in Stellenbosch, a product of Afrikaner nationalism. It started as a newspaper business, churning out deeply conservative, pro-apartheid content. Die Burger and Beeld were its weapons, shaping public sentiment in an era where words held the power to uphold an entire system.
But media empires built on ideology tend to crumble with time. As apartheid collapsed, Naspers did something remarkable: it pivoted. In the 1980s and 1990s, it started buying up television and digital media assets, launching M-Net, Africa’s first pay-TV service, and later DSTV, which became the undisputed king of African satellite television.
Then came the moment that would define Naspers forever, an investment so audacious, so improbable, that it turned a once-provincial South African company into one of the greatest tech investors in history.
The Tencent Coup
In 2001, Koos Bekker, the visionary CEO of Naspers, bet $32 million on a small, unknown Chinese startup called Tencent. The company was working on an instant messaging app, QQ, in a country where the internet was still finding its feet. It was a long shot, a speculative move in a market most Westerners had ignored.
Then WeChat happened.
Tencent grew into a tech superpower, controlling everything from gaming to finance, social media, and entertainment in China. Naspers’ 32-million-dollar punt ballooned into an asset worth over $100 billion, making it one of the greatest venture capital bets of all time. The problem? It was so successful that Naspers became little more than a holding company for its Tencent stake, an irony that would later haunt it.
The Invisible African Giant
For most of the 2000s and 2010s, Naspers was Tencent. The company’s actual African operations were sideshows compared to the monster it had created in China. South African regulators fretted as Naspers grew so large that it single-handedly distorted the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. At one point, it made up over 20% of the entire index, forcing pension funds and investors to hold disproportionate amounts of its stock.
Yet, while its African operations never reached Tencent’s heights, Naspers was far from dormant. It was quietly shaping the continent’s digital landscape. It owned PayU, a fintech powerhouse; it acquired Takealot, South Africa’s answer to Amazon; it backed Prosus, an investment vehicle that would go on to swallow up companies from India to Brazil.
And then there was Showmax, its attempt to fight off Netflix in the streaming wars. But unlike DSTV, which had decades of dominance, Showmax found itself in a brutal contest. The battlefield was shifting, and for the first time in a long while, Naspers was facing a real challenge.
Breaking Free from Tencent’s Shadow
By the late 2010s, Naspers had a new problem: it was too rich, but not in the right way. Its Tencent stake was now worth more than the entire company itself. Investors were frustrated. South Africans were puzzled. A company that was born in Stellenbosch was now essentially a Chinese tech proxy.
So, in 2019, it spun off its global tech investments into Prosus1, listing it in Amsterdam, a move designed to break free from Tencent’s gravitational pull. It didn’t fully work. Investors still valued Naspers far below what its holdings were worth. But it was a start.
What Comes Next?
Today, Naspers is a paradox. It is a South African company that makes most of its money outside South Africa. It is a tech investor, but not a tech company. It is one of the biggest media groups on the continent, yet its future is increasingly tied to global markets.
And yet, for all its wealth, influence, and reach, Naspers remains largely invisible to the everyday African. It doesn’t inspire the same recognition as MTN, Safaricom, or even DSTV. But make no mistake: its fingerprints are everywhere.
https://www.prosus.com/
You are absolutely right. Naspers is one of the most amazing stories in the tech world and in Africa at the same time.
You described very well the three major turning points: 1) being a pioneer of electronic media, 2) the investment in Tencent, 3) the spin-off of Prosus.
However, we have some difficulties to see what the next growth story could be.
Do you think that Naspers still has visionary pioneers at the top of the company?
I enjoyed the article. Easy read and informative.