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# Advtech is closing in on 120,000 students, with growth increasingly coming from beyond South Africa
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/advtech-interim-results-enrolments-rest-of-africa/
- Published: 2026-08-26T02:45:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T02:44:59.000Z
- Description: Earnings rose 16% and the dividend 18% in the six months to June, on enrolment growth that came from the tertiary brands and the schools north of the border rather than from South African classrooms.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Advtech does two quite different things for a living. It runs private schools, colleges and universities under names like Crawford International, Makini Schools, Emeris and Rosebank International, and it runs a staffing business that manages payrolls and places people in jobs across Africa. In the six months to June the first one grew and the second one shrank.

Revenue rose 8%, to R5.06 billion, and costs did not keep up with it. Advtech now keeps 22 cents out of every rand it takes in, against 21 cents a year ago.

Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure, rose 16%, and shareholders get 53 cents a share, a fifth more than last year. The market marked the stock down anyway on Monday, which is roughly what happens when a share has already run up more than a third in a year.

## Where the pupils came from

Advtech taught 119 197 people this half, 13% more than a year ago, and almost none of the growth came from the schools South Africans would recognise. Enrolment at home crept up 1%. The schools elsewhere in Africa grew fourteen times faster than that.

The real growth is in the lecture halls. Close to 71 500 students are on full qualifications, nearly a fifth more than last year, and that side of the business now brings in R2.243 billion. In February Advtech opened a R420 million campus in Sandton for Emeris, the brand that folds Varsity College, Vega, MSA and HSM into one.

## The staffing arm going the other way

The staffing arm went the other way, and not gently. Revenue fell 15%, with the rest of Africa down 16% and South Africa down 9%. Advtech points at the closure of USAID in February 2025, which took the aid-funded payrolls it managed away with it. The division still made money and still widened its margin, which mostly tells you how small it is: Business Day puts the whole thing at 4% of operating profit.

The one thing Advtech cannot schedule is the paperwork. Government opened a route to university status in 2025, and the rules for actually applying are still being drafted. Rosebank International and Emeris are both waiting with the forms in hand.