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Africa Needs Jobs — the Agri-Food Industry Can Provide Them: How the Sector Can Boost its Impact on Employment Across the Continent
Sub-Saharan Africa’s working-age population is projected to increase by more than 20 million per year until 2050. Yet according to Loïc De Cannière at Incofin Investment Management, the region created "only" 9 million jobs per year on average during the first two decades of this century. He argues that if job growth can't keep pace with this growing demographic, unemployment will likely lead to more poverty, societal unrest and migratory pressures. The solution, he explains, is to support the industries with the biggest potential for job creation, starting with the agri-food sector.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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Public Good vs. Profitable Exits: Why Public Innovation Agencies Must Stop Copying Venture Capital
A new class of venture capitalist is emerging, but they aren’t Wall Street financiers or Silicon Valley tech bros. As Emre Eren Korkmaz at the University of Oxford argues, they are public innovation agencies that are shifting their funding approach: Instead of supporting high-risk research and innovations aimed at delivering societal benefit, they have begun to adopt the logic of venture capital, favoring commercially viable projects that are more likely to secure follow-on private funding. He explores the downsides to this shift, arguing that the world needs these institutions to do what private capital cannot or will not: supporting innovation for the public good, not just for profitable exits.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Time is a Social Innovator’s Most Precious Resource: Why Are So Many Funders Wasting It?
For social entrepreneurs and civil society innovators, time is a perpetually scarce resource. But according to Tanner Methvin at Impact Amplifier, in his decades of engagement with these innovators and their funders, he has often been shocked by how wasteful some of the funding world is with the ecosystem’s time. He argues that many funders don't fully understand the time demands imposed by their cumbersome systems for applying for grants or investments, or responding to requests for proposals. He explores these inefficiencies, and proposes a better way for funders to support the social innovation community.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Are Impact Investors Really Listening?: Why Capturing Stakeholder Insights is Key to Impactful Investment Strategies
Collecting data is easy for impact investors; acting on it is harder. As Taanya Khare at Acumen explains, most impact investment firms turn data-driven insights into action through intentional spaces like investment committees or portfolio review sessions. But she argues that listening is about more than surveys or feedback loops — it requires investors to sit down with company teams to make sense of customer insights, identify blind spots and co-create better solutions and impact strategies. She shares what Acumen has learned from embedding listening and impact management into every stage of its investment process.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Right Decision, Wrong Reasons: The Way Forward from the Attack on Global Aid
The global aid system is fracturing, with profound implications for the roughly 4 billion people who live on less than $7 a day — and especially for the 120+ million who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. But as Simon Marot Touloung, Elana Banin and Jakob Øster argue, while recent attacks on the system may be overly simplistic, they point to a real issue: Humanitarian aid had failed to evolve, and it is structurally incapable of catalyzing the long-term economic transformation displaced communities need. They explore some market-based alternatives to traditional aid, and propose five principles to guide the transition from the failing aid model toward new approaches that can actually deliver resilience and dignity.
- Categories
- Investing
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How India’s Non-Bank Financial Companies are Closing the MSME Credit Gap — And What Other Emerging Markets Can Learn from Their Success
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) make up around 90% of businesses and employ over half of the workforce globally, while generating up to 40% of GDP and creating 70% of formal jobs in emerging markets. Yet according to Sameer Nanda at Ugro Capital Limited, these businesses face an ongoing credit gap that, in India alone, amounts to an estimated ₹80 trillion. He explains how non-bank financial companies are addressing this gap by offering dynamic and flexible lending services designed for MSMEs — and shares useful lessons from their approach that can be applied in other emerging economies with similar credit challenges.
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Beyond Shock, Money or Mandate: Why African Banks Aren’t Taking Bold Climate Action — And What it Will Take to Move Forward
Africa is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Yet though climate finance has emerged as a growing solution, African banks have yet to truly ramp up their climate lending. As Carla Legros and Anthony Mbithi argue, one reason for this lack of urgency is that the financial case for this lending has rarely been framed in ways that resonate with how banks operate — namely, as a clear money-making opportunity in the near to medium term. They share a framework for understanding financial institutions' level of engagement in climate finance, providing funders and policymakers with a tool they can use to match their interventions to banks’ institutional reality.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing
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Aligning Capital with Justice: How Innovative Finance Can Enable the Final Stretch Toward Energy Access in Africa
The world has made unprecedented progress toward universal energy access, and today over 90% of the global population has electricity. But as Roeland Menger at Nithio explains, the remaining 10% live in rural and low-income communities — primarily in Africa — that typical business and funding models can't reach. He argues that the exclusion of these markets is not only ineffective but unjust, and highlights several innovative investment approaches that are expanding decentralized energy to the last mile.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing
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