N7.3bn Microfinance Equity Fund for Nigeria, Ghana

Monday, May 11, 2009

The gap between the demand for and supply of micro credit for micro-financing of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in the Anglophone West Africa has drawn the attention of some business development companies to launch a fund that would pool funds together to fill up this gap basically in Nigeria and Ghana. Alitheia Capital ( Nigeria ), Goodwell Investments (The Netherlands) and JCS Investments Limited ( Ghana ) have come together to launch a fund focused on investing in and developing microfinance banks and entrepreneurial microfinance organizations on a social and commercially viable basis.

According to the promoters of the project, “it is founded on the principal belief that improving access to affordable financial services for people in the base of the pyramid contributes to sustainable development, and that this improvement can best be achieved by developing and scaling up entrepreneurial microfinance organizations and integrating them into the mainstream financial sector.

Source: Business Day (link opens in a new window)