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High Expectations Require New Approaches: What Africa’s Social Innovators Need to Scale — And Why Support Systems Must Evolve
Social entrepreneurs are tackling some of Africa's biggest development challenges. Yet many struggle to scale beyond their initial promise, despite heightened expectations to deliver both jobs and social impact. And as Amabelle Nwakanma, Akolade Oladipupo, Abdullahi Ibrahim and Chukwuemeka Okeke at LEAP Africa explain, though accelerators, incubators and fellowships have proliferated across the continent to support these innovators, it's unclear if these programs are actually aligned with their current needs. They share insights from a study LEAP Africa conducted, with support from the William Davidson Institute, to better understand where current enterprise support models succeed, and where they fall short.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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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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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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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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Accelerating Climate-Health: How the Sector Can Become Africa’s Next Strategic Investment Frontier
Africa faces a growing dual challenge at the critical nexus of climate and healthcare, as countries and health systems that are already strained by chronic underinvestment must now also deal with climate-related shocks and disease burdens. As Rajat Chabba at the William Davidson Institute and Martin Slawek at Open Capital Advisors explain, without targeted investment in integrated climate-health solutions, these health systems risk becoming overwhelmed, undermining public health and climate resilience across the region. But they also argue that these pressures create a clear opportunity for investors, businesses, and public and development-sector players. They explore why climate-health presents a compelling investment case in Africa.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing
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What Drives Corporate Philanthropy in Asia: Exploring the Region’s Unique Approach to Giving
As Asian wealth has surged in recent decades, so has the region’s corporate philanthropy. According to Gwendolyn Lim and Denise Chew at the Bridgespan Group, the 20 top Asian corporate funders alone commit an average of $3.7 billion annually to social and environmental causes. They explore the factors that are driving this trend — from Asian business culture to government CSR policies — and discuss three widely used approaches to corporate giving in Asia, as highlighted in a recent Bridgespan report.
- Categories
- Investing
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