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Namibia-Based Firm to Back Early-Stage Southern African Startups With $10 Million Fund
The fund will focus on sectors including fintech, agritech, healthtech, education, clean energy, e-commerce, and enterprise software.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Bestseller Supports Regenerative Agriculture in South Africa Through International Fund
The Regenerative Fund for Nature supports projects that are based on local knowledge and existing practices. It was established by Conservation International and Kering in 2021 with Inditex joining in 2023. BESTSELLER is now joining the fund as a partner.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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IFC Discloses Proposed $25 Million Investment in Admaius’ Virunga Africa Fund II
The fund is targeting $500 million to invest in mid- to large-cap African companies.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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SIDBI and Shell Foundation Launch US $3.1 Million Initiative to Expand Access to Green Finance for Nano-Entrepreneurs
Backed by a $3.1 million grant from Shell Foundation, the EN-Trans RSF provides a second-loss risk coverage to Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs), including SIDBI as a lender, for loans extended to low-income communities.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Viewpoint: Failure as a KPI: Finding Philanthropy’s Courage to Fund and Fail (and Talk About It!)
Absence of failure is not evidence of success; it is evidence that risk is being avoided. The beauty of philanthropy is that we can take risks and we can afford to fail and learn. All we need is the courage to imagine our work differently.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Global
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Venture Studio OneBio Locks $6 Million First Close to Turn African Lab Research Into Global Biotech Companies
Unlike a conventional VC firm, OneBio works as both an investor and a venture studio, creating biotech companies from the ground up.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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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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Viewpoint: Philanthropy Is Underestimating AI. Here’s How to Catch Up
If you are operating a philanthropy and you think your only engagement with AI needs to be in your internal practices or in “AI for XYZ” (eg., better farming), I ask you to consider doing more.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- Global
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