IB Choice

The AVPA Landscape for Social Investments in Africa report maps the diverse field of social investment across East, West and Southern Africa. It focuses on providers of social capital, their investment strategies, and opportunities for collaboration.

This working paper is a primer on “innovative finance”, a catch-all term that refers to a range of strategies to effectively generate, combine, and use public and private financing to achieve a range of development goals and impact.

This study aims to depict the current state and trends of the impact investment market. In 2018, GIIN analysed information from 229 participants with a combined impact investment portfolio of 228.1 billion dollars.

According to impact investment chain actors - fund managers, development finance institutions, intermediaries, entrepreneurs, governments, civil society stakeholders, and other experts - there are five crucial factors to improving impact incentives and increasing impact investments that capital providers, fund managers, and businesses/enterprises should focus on:

The findings of this study indicate a strong need for risk capital for agri-food SMEs in Africa. The case studies show that agri-food SMEs need assistance in business strategy development, governance and management, as well as operations and marketing.

The Model Agreement for Responsible Contract Farming is a simple and practical legal tool to support the implementation of global principles and guidelines and make responsible investment a reality. This article summarizes the main insights and recommendations from the guide to leverage the insights for practitioners.

Sub Saharan Africa (SSA)’s regional economy has quintupled in size from USD 300 billion in 2000 to USD 1.6 trillion in 2017, and is expected to surpass USD 2 trillion by 2020. Apart from the rapidly expanding market, favorable regional conditions have spurred improvements in the business environment, and provide leads to where private sector participation can prove profitable.

This McKinsey study highlights three success factors for mobile money systems: scale, partnerships, and innovation.

The Harvard Business Review article focuses on the implementation of inclusive business initiatives and stresses the need to move from CSR to core business activities.

The Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society benchmarked the philanthropic sector in 15 Asian countries. The analysis ranks the countries on their enabling environment for philanthropic giving.

This publication provides a snapshot of the global blended finance landscape, based on the private sector investments made by 35 bilateral and multilateral development institutions between 2012 and 2015.

Blended finance aims to make the financial sector more sustainable and more responsible by unlocking private investment in unprecedented scale to achieve the SGDs – as a matter of good conscience, but also of good business. Financial investments from Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and the private sector in form of blended finance are critical to build more inclusive businesses.