Publication database

This report takes stock of the increasingly pluralistic landscape of agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprise (agri-SME) finance in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, with the aim to establish a new perspective on the market overall - sizing and segmenting the market in new ways, reflecting on the rapidly accelerating imperative around climate, and identifying new priorities for action.

Conexsus supports small farmers associations and cooperatives that work under a income-generating model that preserves standing forest and other biomes. It focuses on three lines of action: business model, market access, and impact finance.

Fomento Social Banamex is the philanthropic arm of Citibanamex Mexico, and its goal is to reduce inequality in Mexico. It promotes capacity-building for social organizations to better meet the needs of marginalized communities living in poverty. Under this scheme and through its strategic partners, it has supported Unión Majomut, a cooperative of coffee farmers from Chiapas, so that it partakes in the entire value chain and earns a higher income for partner families.

This learning paper adds to the body of knowledge on the commercial and development impact potential of smallholder-sourcing agribusiness models. It quantifies the share of investment flowing to agribusinesses sourcing from smallholder farmers within the broader category of agriculture. In addition, it captures 15 investor perspectives on the commercial viability and development impact of companies that source from smallholder farmers.

The factsheet shortly explains the role of IFC in financing inclusive business endeavours. Describing untapped business opportunities among low-income communities, the article emphasizes the win-win of inclusive business models for economic growth and human development.

This report explores the role of different kinds of capital in bending the arc of agricultural market development towards inclusive growth. It pays particular attention to how impact-focused players deploying capital that is flexible in terms of risk-return expectations can best deploy it in order to catalyse large-scale transformations towards inclusion.

To boost agricultural development in developing countries, donors are increasingly resorting to blended finance: the practice of combining public development funds with private resources. Blended finance may open opportunities to inject more resources into the food and agriculture sector, but the assumptions that blended finance is inherently beneficial for agricultural development and that it is an efficient way to finance smallholder agriculture, are not supported by the evidence currently available.

This paper argues that private finance blending should be used with caution in rural development until donors can demonstrate the merits of blending using evidence-based results, in particular the added value of blending for development impact. This is especially important given the obligations of donors to make progress on the reduction of social, economic and gender inequalities. The increasing focus on private finance should not obscure the vital role of public finance in promoting inclusive agricultural transformation that benefits small-scale farmers.

Esta presentación busca explicar por qué es necesario para las empresas enfocarse en la creación de valor con la base de la pirámide. Para esto expone brevemente 10 casos de proyectos de empresas latinoamericanas que han trabajado con este sector. Asi mismo, da recomendaciones de cómo poder llegar con este sector y cuáles pueden ser los retos.

The Impact investing market map, provides three basic but crucial benefits to the impact investing industry: (1) a common definition of a thematic investment that is aligned with at least one international organisation, global market leader and/or data provider; (2) basic criteria that explain a theme in practical terms, including thematic and financial conditions to identify specific businesses and investments aligned with the definition provided;  (3) a list of KPIs used by the impact investing community to track and assess the environmental and social performance of a specific theme.

The objective of this study is to document the current situation in risk capital for agrifood businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa as evidence for related policy recommendations to governments, investment funds, technical service suppliers, philanthropists and other stakeholders. The paper summarises funds providing risk capital to agrifood SMEs in Africa, analyses the demand for risk capital and the extent to which demand and supply are matched. Finally, it identifies alternative means of financing for agrifood SMEs and concludes with policy recommendations.