Publication database

The 2020 Annual Impact Investor Survey provides a comprehensive overview of the impact investing market. This edition captures data from 294 of the world’s leading impact investors who collectively manage USD 404 billion of impact investing assets, representing an important subset of the USD 715 billion global impact investing market. The report looks at respondents’ investment activity during 2019 and their plans for 2020, market developments over the past decade, and challenges facing the market going forward. Respondents also shared insights on how Covid-19 might affect their activities.

IIC releases an annual “Year in Retrospect" publication that throws light on investment trends and emerging market developments across key impact sectors such as Financial Inclusion, Agriculture, Healthcare, Technology for Development and Climate-tech. Their research highlights that 2021 has proven to be a strong year for the Indian impact sector, with more than 300 impact focussed enterprises raising $7 Bn in capital. While investment activity was robust across sectors as well as the stage of development of the enterprise, several late-stage companies have raised significant amounts of capital leading to a 135% growth in overall capital raised in 2021 vis a vis 2020.

Produced by Magnitt, Wa’ed sponsors the 2021 MENA VC Impact Investment Report, which tries to shed some light on the VC impact investment ecosystem in MENA since 2016. The report reveals that $444m was invested across 403 deals by impact-driven startups across the region since 2016. This accounts for 7% of all venture capital (VC) deployed in MENA startups between 2016 and the third quarter of 2021. The information gathered in the report aims to enable a more informed conversation on this space between stakeholders, and to attract greater investment and support for impact-driven sectors and startups.

This paper provides examples of how 2SCALE tackled youth inclusion in its partnerships. 2SCALE has been experimenting with various options to support young producers and entrepreneurs in the agribusiness sector. Making agriculture interesting to youth requires making it attractive and remunerative by having access to land, finance and technologies in order to modernise. Besides production another alternative for youth inclusion was explored: specialised service delivery to value chain actors.

Between November 2018 and November 2019, Gates Foundation and Mars Edge discussed collaboration opportunities to accelerate the urban go-to-market strategy of Mars Edge’s nutritious savory snack GoMo™, specifically designed to help address nutritional deficiencies of 6-18 year olds in India, with a focus on reaching low-income consumers. The Growth for Growth (G4G) network of service providers set up by the Foundation’s PSP program co-designed this strategy to reach lower-income urban areas. In December 2019, the PSP approved a grant to assess and adapt the model during a market test. As part of the grant, the collaboration between G4G and Mars then continued until December 2020. This case study aims to share the lessons learned throughout this journey, in terms of public-private collaboration and innovation process.

This report aggregates the voices of 6,000 Kenyan farmers interviewed between June 2020 and May 2021. They relate their lived experience during the Covid-19 pandemic and how livelihoods were adversely affected by supply chain disruptions and government lockdowns. 

This report provides discussions with eight agricultural development organisations: Technoserve, SNV, Farm Africa, Self Help Africa, One Acre Fund, Twin and Twin Trading, ACDI/VOCA, and FANRPAN, that are linking smallholder African farmers to markets. It shares the organisations' perspectives on the role of enterprise in future food security and nutrition; the experiences and challenges; and recommendations to G8 leaders on how to embed enterprise development and solutions more effectively into the post-2015 agenda.

This report explores the gap in global affordable housing - it outlines how four approaches - unlocking land supply, reducing construction costs, improving operations and maintenance, and lowering financing costs for buyers and developers - could reduce the cost of affordable housing by 20 to 50%, and substantially narrow the affordable housing gap by 2025.

This report documents an interview with Ruban Selvanayagam from Fez Tá Pronto Construction System in Brazil, a real estate development model that is focused on serving people at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) with affordable and high quality housing. It discusses the dysfunctional mainstream housing market dynamics, and the current practical challenges that face the scheme.

The report draws on Financial Diaries data from India, Kenya, and Mexico. It explores why women in emerging economies don’t access and use formal financial services to the extent of their male counterparts. It offers a more nuanced view of women’s financial behavior and comes up with product design recommendations for financial services providers.