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Missing the Exit: The Growing Need for New Exit Pathways in Agriculture Investing
Exits make the wheel of impact investing go around, enabling companies to sustain and grow their operations, while also allowing investors to recycle returned capital into other impactful solutions. But as Coco Lim at Acumen explains, right now that wheel is not turning — particularly in agriculture, which has the lowest ratio of exits to deals of any sector in Africa. She argues that this situation puts impact investors at a crossroads: They can stay the course and hope that big exits are around the corner, or they can build the necessary exit pathways themselves. She discusses the challenges of achieving exits in smallholder-focused agriculture, highlighting the limitations of current investing models and exploring some exit strategies that offer untapped opportunities for impact investors and businesses.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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An Important Update on ANDE’s Future and Sunsetting Operations
Danielle Baussan, Interim Executive Vice President for Policy Programs at the Aspen Institute has made the difficult decision to wind down ANDE’s operations and sunset the network by November 2026.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Finance, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Africa Ecosystem Catalysts Facility Expands into Nigeria with USD 450K in First Investments
Backing Trade Lenda and AirSmat, Nigerian startups advancing financial inclusion and climate-smart agriculture through fit-for-purpose capital.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise, WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenya’s Arc Ride Raises $33.3 Million to Expand into South Africa
"The model removes the need for riders to own batteries outright, cutting upfront costs while enabling swaps through a network of smart battery-swap stations. Its clientele includes Yadea, one of the world’s largest EV manufacturers."
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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CLIC Report: Landscape of Technical Assistance to Agri-SMEs
Via CLIC, "This report maps over 200 organizations providing technical assistance to agri-SMEs across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Global
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ChipMango Raises $1.9 Million to Build Africa’s Chip-Design Talent
ChipMango said it will use the funding to expand its engineering and product-development capacity, support new commercial design engagements, scale its AI-native learning and workforce platform, and develop its edge-AI and intelligent-sensor technologies.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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SolarAid Appoints Nick Pearson as Chief Executive Officer
Nick joins SolarAid at an exciting point in our journey as we continue working towards a future where everyone, everywhere has access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Region
- Global
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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
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