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Rethinking What it Means to Start a Business: Why Systemic Venture Building Matters for Africa’s Food Future
Africa’s entrepreneurs are often seen as risky investments not due to any limitations of their own businesses, but because of the risks in the systems around them. As a result, as Dieuwertje Nelissen, Eveline Jansen and Rachael Kirui at Enviu argue, it's important for development stakeholders to move beyond de-risking individual businesses and to put greater effort into strengthening and de-risking the systems that support them. They explore this systemic approach in the context of African agriculture, sharing a venture-building model that can help entrepreneurs reduce early-stage risk and scale sustainable impact.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Analysis: A Defining Moment for African Economic Transformation
For the first time, the world’s largest economies gathered on the continent to examine the unfair cost of capital, the inefficiencies that block domestic investment, and the reforms needed to support Africa’s trajectory toward a more prosperous, equitable future.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: Why Impact Investing Might Collapse and How to Stop It
The current paradigm of viewing impact in isolation from the systems surrounding investments is not sustainable. Applying a systems lens helps investors make better decisions related to sourcing, management, and measurement that lead to lasting positive impact.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Global
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Report: Reimagining the Future of Entrepreneurship Support in East Africa
A new report from WDI, "Reimagining the Future of ESOs in East Africa," integrates insights from accelerators, incubators, investors, ESO donors and intermediaries in the East African entrepreneurship ecosystem.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology, Transportation
- Region
- Global
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The ABCs of Catalytic Sunsetting: How Foundations and Other Philanthropic Funders Can Exit Boldly — And Leave a Bigger Legacy
What if the best way to ensure your philanthropic legacy … was to close your doors? As Nancy Swanson-Roberts at Linked Foundation and Kusi Hornberger at Dalberg Capital argue, the world’s most pressing problems demand urgent, bold action that incremental giving over generations often can't enable. They explain why philanthropic organizations like Linked Foundation are deliberately spending down their assets within a defined timeframe to catalyze systemic change — an approach they call “catalytic sunsetting" — and share three strategies that can help any funder exit with purpose and power.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Scaling Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach for Developing Local Ecosystems
Across Africa, governments and development actors are investing in youth entrepreneurship, with funders and international NGOs increasingly partnering with local non-profits to develop better support ecosystems for young entrepreneurs. But as Grégory Valadié and Juan Carlos Thomas at TechnoServe explain, many of these local organizations face limitations in capacity, systems and tools. They explore four ways to maximize these partnerships’ impact by complementing their direct implementation work with systems-level solutions, and leveraging institutions that already reach young people at scale.
- Categories
- Education
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Building Smarter Data Practices in Entrepreneurship Support Ecosystems: How Entrepreneurs, Investors and Other Stakeholders Can Drive Systemic Change
Entrepreneurship support ecosystems include a diverse range of actors, from incubators and accelerators to policymakers, impact investors and other funders. But though strengthening these ecosystems is a growing priority in emerging markets, monitoring, evaluation and learning remains a persistent challenge, due in part to a lack of data sharing. Heather Esper at the William Davidson Institute and Keith Obade and Moses Waweru at Villgro Africa explore the reasons various stakeholders collect data, the obstacles that keep this data fragmented and underutilized, and the ways these ecosystems can improve their data practices.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Measuring Systems Change in Agricultural Finance in Africa: Practical Metrics and Guidance for Detecting and Tracking Real Change
Despite employing 65-70% of the region's population and contributing 20-40% of national GDPs, Africa's agriculture sector receives less than 3% of its overall commercial credit — and in some countries, that share hasn't changed for decades. But according to Carla Legros, a consultant and strategist in agricultural and inclusive finance, that doesn't necessarily mean that progress has stalled. She proposes a set of metrics for assessing whether systems change is actually happening in the continent's agricultural finance sector.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
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