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Turning Silos into Synergy: An Inclusive Finance Pilot Provides Lessons for Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
Silos and fragmentation have slowed progress in inclusive finance for too long, as the efforts of private actors, public institutions, philanthropic funders and other stakeholders are often not intentionally aligned. As Seth Spiro at FINCA and Moustapha Seck at FLUID argue, one reason for this lack of alignment is that many of the systems underpinning inclusive finance were not built for multi-stakeholder collaboration. They explore solutions to these structural constraints, explaining how FINCA’s partnership with FLUID has aligned incentives, learning and execution to overcome organizational silos.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance, Investing
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Africa’s Energy Future Needs More Than ‘Trickle-Down Electronomics’: Why the Debate Around False Trade-Offs Risks Leaving Millions Behind
Africa’s energy access debate is increasingly focused on the question of whether to prioritize household access or industrial and productive uses that can drive economic growth. But as Ryan Kilpatrick and Patrick K. Tonui at GOGLA argue, the deeper challenge is about understanding how electricity demand, income generation and productivity evolve in practice — and determining how best to balance the technologies, delivery models, financing structures and timelines involved in widespread electrification. They discuss these overlapping factors, and push back against the concept of “trickle-down electronomics” — i.e., the assumption that prioritizing industry will enable governments to expand grids to unserved areas and allow households to afford electricity over time.
- Categories
- Energy
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When Competitors Collaborate: How Eight Impact-First Investors Came Together to Confront the Valley of Death
The “Valley of Death” — the gap between early-stage capital and the scale-ready financing that social enterprises need to grow — is a perennial challenge in development finance. But according to Brigit Helms at Miller Center for Global Impact, investors rarely slow down enough to unpack why it persists, and what role they can play in closing it. She discusses the initial findings of a unique collaborative study conducted by eight leading impact investors — organizations that are both peers and competitors — who each contributed individual fund data to identify the cost of maintaining their impact-first models. As Helms argues, this expense is not an inefficiency to optimize away, but rather the true cost of closing the Valley of Death.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing, research
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Getting the Most out of Monitoring Data: An Impact Investor Explores the Value of a Unified Approach
Monitoring data is a source of frustration for many impact-focused organizations, as many see it as another line item in their budgets, a task required for funder compliance, or a backward-looking tool that isn’t necessarily relevant to future programming. But as Juan Taborda Burgos, Scott Caple and Jorge Bouchot at Root Capital argue, this paradigm fails to recognize the power of monitoring data to inform strategy and insights. They explore how Root Capital has standardized its monitoring system across its global programs, and highlight the value of taking a unified approach to collecting and utilizing this data.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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The Missing Ingredient in Impact Investment in Africa: A New Financing Model for Business Advisory Service Providers Tackles the ’Lack of Investable Pipeline’ Challenge
Despite the growth of impact investing in Africa, investors still face a commonly cited constraint that could impede future deal flow: the lack of investable pipeline. But according to John Scicchitano at Pangea Africa and Rob Mills at Social Finance International, the main reason for this issue is the fact that African small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often struggle to meet the technical standards that impact investors demand, while lacking the network that could connect them to these investors. They explore how business advisory service providers (BASPs) can help meet these needs for SMEs, and present a new financing mechanism that can help BASPs scale up their investment facilitation support.
- Categories
- Investing
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Farming Under Solar: How Agriphotovoltaics Can Transform Rural Livelihoods in India
As India scales up solar energy, a critical question has emerged: Can this transition deliver clean power without displacing farmers from their land? According to Laxmi Sharma, Bidisha Banerjee, Subhodeep Basu and Ashok Gulati at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, the country's renewable energy expansion has been led by large, ground-mounted solar projects, often located on agricultural land. But while this model has been effective in scaling solar capacity, it has also created a disconnect between the energy and agriculture sectors, while limiting participation among farmers. They explore how agriphotovoltaics (Agri-PV) can address these issues by enabling the cultivation of crops beneath or between panel arrays, and discuss the pros and cons of different Agri-PV operating models.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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The Hidden Filters: How to Fix the Biases that Skew Investment Pipelines Away from Women Founders
Over the past decade, gender lens investing has moved from the fringes of impact investing into a more mainstream priority for many investors. But as Michal Januszewski at LeFil Consulting argues, while the overall gender-lens thesis has gained traction, the actual representation of women-led businesses remains stubbornly low within investor portfolios, with women-only founding teams capturing just 2.3% of global VC funding in 2024. He explores the structural and behavioral biases that can exclude women founders in each stage of the investment funnel, and shares practical recommendations on how investors can address them.
- Categories
- Investing
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Three Questions for Five African Businesses: Insights from Sankalp Africa Summit’s ‘Enterprise Showcase’
The recent Sankalp Africa Summit featured an “Enterprise Showcase” where up-and-coming African businesses shared information about their work and missions. NextBillion interviewed five of these entrepreneurs and company representatives, asking each of them three questions: What are the main challenges you’re facing in running your business? What kind of support would help you overcome these challenges? And what’s one thing you wish funders understood about your business needs? Their responses reveal some of the innovative approaches and key issues that are emerging in Africa’s vibrant ecosystem of small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Transportation, WASH
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