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Beyond Risk: How Addressing Transaction Costs Can Boost Lending to Agricultural SMEs in Africa
Providing loans to agricultural enterprises in East Africa can be a complicated task, with challenges ranging from higher origination costs to arduous journeys to conduct due diligence. As Brian Milder of Aceli Africa explains, that makes many lenders reluctant to serve these businesses — and this lack of capital is stunting the growth of local agri-SMEs. In this third article in a four-part series, he explores the barriers to financing in the industry – particularly the under-recognized role of high transaction costs in limiting capital flows – and shares how Aceli is addressing them.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing, lending
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Bringing Impact Data Out of the Dark: Why Impact Investors Need Harmonized Reporting Platforms to Reach Their Goals
Impact reporting today is inconsistent, unverified and locked up in information silos, with multiple, competing reporting platforms and methodologies. As Adam S. Bendell of Toniic explains, this makes it difficult for impact investors to compare and maximize the positive net impact of their investments. The key to solving this dilemma, he says, is to develop an interoperable ecosystem for reporting impact data. He shares four ways the sector could move toward this goal, building a system in which investors can easily compare impact performance across their portfolios.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Cameroon’s Maviance to Digitise Payments Across Central Africa With $3 Million Funding
Per recent reports, the $3 million investment was solely from MFS Africa, an African fintech company that connects mobile money systems to banks and other financial institutions.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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IFC International Finance Invests in COMASA to Improve Resilience of the Agricultural Sector in Nicaragua
IFC has partnered with Comercializadora de Mani, SA (COMASA), to help preserve the competitiveness of the Central American country and protect thousands of jobs within the industry.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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Actis Plans to Double Africa Energy Investments to $2 Billion
Actis LLP, a London-based private equity firm focused on emerging markets, plans to finalize deals on six African power projects in 2021.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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CDC Group Commits $100 Million to ETG Group
CDC Group, the UK's development finance institution and impact investor, has announced a $100 million debt commitment to ETG, an agricultural conglomerate connecting smallholder farmers to global markets through its operations in 48 countries worldwide.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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21st Century Investing: Why Today’s Global Challenges Call for a System-Level Approach to Impact
From climate change and embedded social inequities to global pandemics, the scope and scale of the risks facing our world have increased. But according to William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg at The Investment Integration Project, these overlapping crises are serving as wake-up calls to many investors, leading them to take a more holistic approach to today's complex challenges. They describe this growing class of “system-level investors,” and how they're going beyond both conventional and sustainable investing to address global problems on a deep, systemic level.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- corporations, ESG, impact investing
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Congo: REDD+ to Reduce CO2 Emissions and Preserve Forests
Congo has just signed an agreement with the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa