Contributor.

Adanna Chukwuma

Adanna Chukwuma

Dr. Adanna Chukwuma is Associate Vice President for Economic Growth and Private Sector Engagement at CARE USA, where she leads work to expand economic opportunity and access to capital for women and women led businesses across CARE’s global footprint. Her work focuses on financial inclusion, enterprise development, private sector partnerships and new models for connecting underserved enterprises to commercial capital. Previously, she held senior roles at Visa and the World Bank, working across social impact, financial inclusion, health systems and economic development. She holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MSc from the University of Oxford, an MBA from Imperial College London and a medical degree from Nigeria.

 

Articles by Adanna Chukwuma

  • Adanna Chukwuma

    The Missing Asset Class: How Aggregated MSMEs Could Unlock the Next Wave of Impact Investing Deal Flow

    Despite years of emphasizing the need to reach underserved businesses, the impact investing sector is increasingly focusing on lower-risk opportunities. According to Adanna Chukwuma at CARE, mature companies have drawn the largest increases in impact assets over the past six years, while funding to seed-stage enterprises has contracted — despite multiple financial instruments designed to serve the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in this segment. As she explains, this trend excludes a vast band of businesses with real revenue, real demand and real growth potential: aggregated MSMEs, i.e., individual enterprises that have joined together to contract and borrow as one. She explores the investment opportunity in these MSMEs, and calls for the creation of a new asset class around them, explaining how this could unlock the flow of impact capital to enterprises that remain systemically overlooked.

    Categories
    Agriculture, Investing
    Tags
    business development, impact investing, MSMEs, smallholder farmers, technical assistance
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