Category: Blog

FSD Africa Investments Member Spotlight with Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investments Officer

Posted on by Riitho

This article was first published on the Convergence website.

 

FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi) is a specialist financial sector investor. Established by FSD Africa and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, FSDAi invests patient, risk-bearing capital in financial intermediaries, facilities, and instruments that advance how the African financial system drives green, economic growth. To date, they have committed about  GBP 127 million across 21 investments.

We spoke with Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investments Officer about how they approach blended finance, the lessons they have learned about measuring impact and success, gender considerations in FSDAi’s work, and more.

 

What are FSDAi’s key priorities and what are you focusing on right now?

A key priority for us is strengthening the core functions of Africa’s financial systems, particularly the financial infrastructure needed to mobilize the continent’s own institutional capital. Africa holds more than $4 trillion in local institutional savings, and this pool is growing rapidly. Yet it remains largely absent from productive private markets. A second priority is scaling finance for energy generation and distribution, the infrastructure that underpins sustainable growth, and nature-positive outcomes. In each case, our aim is to demonstrate a commercial case strong enough to attract further capital. Ultimately, we want to broaden the diversity and depth of capital allocators in our markets, from those serving small and growing businesses to larger institutional asset managers.

 

Tell us about your approach to blended finance and how it has evolved.

FSDAi uses its catalytic capital to assume early transaction risks, test new models, and mobilize third-party capital. These structures then enable markets to attract further capital for Africa’s sustained growth. For example, our first investment was in the Africa Local Currency Bond Fund (ALCB Fund). By anchoring local-currency bond issuances, the ALCB Fund draws domestic capital into the market while strengthening how local bond markets function.

We deploy catalytic capital for market-shaping transactions at the frontier of finance, and we use our position as an active investor to engage directly in the design of innovative financial instruments and structures that are mostly blended.

Our approach has evolved over time toward co-creating blended finance vehicles that meet the capital needs of the investors we aim to mobilize, such as domestic pension funds. We work backwards, asking what tenor, currency, governance standard, reporting, and risk allocation would make a vehicle investable for them, and how our capital can help address the obstacles that keep them out.

We also pay keen attention to replicability. A structure that cannot be replicated in other markets is a subsidy, not a market intervention. We work upstream with FSD Africa’s market-building teams on regulation, policy, and market infrastructure, so that the structures we invest in are supported by enabling environments.

 

FSDAi has featured in notable strategic transactions, including the Ci-Gaba Fund, ARM-Harith’s Climate Transition Fund, and, most recently, the Cape Water Performance-Based Bond. Tell us more about FSDAi’s role in these transactions.

In the Ci-Gaba Fund, we were a co-creator rather than simply an investor. Drawing on FSD Africa’s market-building work in Ghana, we helped design and underwrite a fund of funds that met Ghanaian pension regulatory requirements and governance standards, then anchored it with $7.5 million. The first close exceeded its $30 million target with more than two-thirds anchored by domestic pension funds, making it Ghana’s first private fund of funds built for domestic capital mobilization at scale.

For ARM-Harith’s Climate Transition Fund, our contribution was structural. Alongside the African Development Bank Group’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa, we provided a combined $20 million of catalytic capital to de-risk pension participation in Africa’s first integrated multi-currency blended finance platform for infrastructure equity; US dollars and local currency in a single vehicle, addressing the mismatch between hard-currency fund structures and local-currency project revenues.

In the Cape Water Performance-Based Bond, we committed ZAR 234 million as an anchor investor alongside the International Finance Corporation. That capital helped validate a highly novel structure, unlocked local pension funds and asset managers, and established a template other investors can reuse.

 

The transactions mentioned above are diverse; how do they reflect FSDAi’s investment approach and your objective to deepen capital markets across the continent?

While the instruments may seem unrelated – a fund of funds, an infrastructure equity platform, a listed bond – the thesis behind them is the same. Africa does not lack capital or investable activity, it lacks instruments that let domestic institutional money reach that activity on terms its own regulators and trustees will accept.

Each transaction adds a missing piece of market architecture. The Ci-Gaba Fund creates a governed channel for pension allocations into private markets in a country where those allocations barely existed. ARM-Harith’s Climate Transition Fund makes local-currency infrastructure equity possible, removing the currency mismatch that has kept pension funds out of the asset class. The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond places an independently verified environmental outcome inside a listed, senior unsecured instrument, opening a new asset class on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Deepening capital markets means widening the instrument set, broadening the investor base, and strengthening the intermediaries in between. That is why we accept the transaction costs of first-of-a-kind deals; going in first so that other investors can follow at a fraction of the effort.

 

What lessons have you learned about measuring the impact and evaluating the success of the blended finance transactions that you featured in?

Three lessons stand out. First, deal-level metrics such as jobs, hectares cleared, businesses financed, and people reached all matter but our real test is market change: did the structure get repeated, did new investors enter, did the regulator move, did the second transaction need less catalytic capital than the first?

Second, outcome definitions have to be bankable before they are agreed. The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond clearly demonstrates this. Linking investor returns to independently verified hectares of invasive alien plants cleared required the parties to settle measurement, verification, and dispute resolution at the structuring stage rather than after signing.

Third, is patience. Market-building effects lag financial returns by years, and claiming clean causality in a syndicated transaction is rarely credible. We rely on interim signals such as follow-on funds, second issuances, and replication by commercial arrangers instead. We also publish our reasoning behind these investments so others can judge it for themselves.

 

Do you apply a gender lens in your blended finance work? At what stage are gender considerations typically discussed?

FSDAi is intentional about applying gender as one of the lenses it uses to influence an inclusive financial system. We have invested in gender diverse teams that promote the role of women as allocators of capital, decision makers, and beneficiaries. Our Nyala Facility was built specifically to back alternative local capital providers that apply gender-lens investment strategies. That includes Aruwa Capital Management in Nigeria, Women’s Investment Club Capital in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, Linea Capital in South Africa, and Iungo Capital in East Africa, where many of the businesses financed are expected to be founded, owned, or led by women.

Gender considerations are integrated at an early stage in our investment process. We apply the 2X Criteria on Women in Leadership to screen investments. When we see an opportunity to influence more diversity, we include such requirements in the environmental, social, and governance action plan and in the key conditions for our investment. Currently, over 80% of our investments meet the 2X Criteria on Leadership and we are committed to continuing to allocate more capital to blended vehicles that reflect the gender diversity that is needed across Africa’s financial markets.

 

The investment landscape across emerging markets has been volatile in recent years, especially with receding development funding. How is FSDAi adjusting to this?

In our view, the investment landscape has evolved. While Africa continues to be perceived as a high-risk investment destination, FSDAi’s work is fundamentally about addressing that risk by deepening financial markets. This means supporting better pricing of risk, improving the availability and quality of market data, strengthening financial allocation infrastructure, and helping to create the conditions for a lower cost of capital over time. That is the nature of our work: building the market foundations that allow capital to move more efficiently, confidently, and at scale.

 

How do you see FSDAi’s blended finance activities evolving in the future, and where do you see opportunities to continue deepening the impact of your work?

We see at least two directions of travel. The first is co-creating blended finance vehicles in thematic areas where the investment case needs to be built, nature-based solutions is the clearest example. The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond showed that ecological outcomes can be independently verified and priced inside a mainstream listed instrument. That template is not confined to water, or to South Africa, and the work now is adapting it to other ecosystems and other markets.

The second is anchoring country-specific vehicles designed around the regulatory requirements of domestic pension funds. The Ci-Gaba Fund in Ghana and ARM-Harith’s Climate Transition Fund in Nigeria both began from what trustees and regulators in those markets could approve, rather than from a structure imported wholesale. That approach takes longer, but it is the only route to allocations at scale.

Replicability is the discipline that connects the two. We prioritize vehicles that can be lifted into a second market with less catalytic capital than the first one required because a structure that works only once, and only with us in it, has not yet changed the market.

Africa’s green transition will employ millions of women. That is not the same as empowering them.

Posted on by Riitho

Africa’s green transition is projected to generate tens of millions of jobs by mid-century, many of them for women, according to new research commissioned by FSD Africa, Shell Foundation and Shortlist. But, while that might sound like progress the reality, says Tokunboh Ishmael, Managing Director and co-founder of Alitheia Capital and a board member of FSD Africa, is that without concerted action this will do little for women’s empowerment.

Writing for Ecofin, Ishmael makes the case that women’s rising participation in green sectors like clean cooking, off-grid solar and waste recycling is masking a deeper problem: they are being concentrated in the lowest-paid, least protected, most precarious tiers of these value chains, while technical and supervisory roles remain overwhelmingly male. Addressing this imbalance is not just a matter of fairness but of returns, she argues.

When Africa talks about its green transition, it counts megawatts, tons of carbon avoided, and dollars mobilized, but new research commissioned by FSD Africa, Shell Foundation, and Shortlist has now given us a number for something we often miss: people. Africa’s green transition could generate up to 7.9 million jobs by 2030, and up to 84.5 million by 2050.

But there is another number that should interest anyone allocating capital on this continent. By 2030, women are projected to hold 31 percent of green jobs, rising to 44 percent by 2050. While it is tempting to read that as progress, it is not. 31 percent is below women’s current share of the workforce, and the report suggests it is a gap that remains entrenched.

I have spent close to twenty years investing in African businesses, the last decade of it through an explicitly gender-lens fund, and I have learned to be suspicious of headcount. Counting women is not the same as including them.

Across all three countries studied in the report, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, women are concentrated in commission-based sales, community distribution, and subsistence micro-trading. Men, meanwhile, dominate the technical, field-based, and formally contracted positions where earnings and progression actually live. So, we are on course to build a green economy that hires millions of women into work that is unskilled, low-paid, and unprotected. That is being called inclusion, and it is not an accident of culture. It is a consequence of design, and a huge transformative opportunity missed.

The reasons lie in the fact that, unlike other regions, Africa’s transition will be driven by decentralized, service-led industries such as clean cooking, off-grid solar, waste recycling, and electric mobility, rather than by large infrastructure projects. Those value chains have the lowest barriers to entry, which is precisely why they are the most accessible to women.

But the same distributed, low-capital delivery models that let women in also channel them into the segments with the weakest job quality. The report found that 86 percent of the green jobs projected for 2030 will be informal. Labor protections designed for formal workers will reach at most 14 percent of that workforce.

When we look at the root causes of this imbalance, one thing stands out: there simply isn’t the focus on training and development needed to move women up the employment value chain. For instance, women make up just 15 percent of certified solar PV trainees, and female enrolment in technical programs rarely exceeds one in five.

Nor is this just a problem confined to women. Only 6.5 percent of young people in Africa have completed a technical and vocational program. Meanwhile, deployment increasingly requires skills such as remote monitoring of distributed assets and battery management. Yet none of the three countries studied has national training programs for these roles at meaningful scale, let alone ones that women can access.

The report warns that without a skilled local workforce, green projects could stall, rely on imported expertise, and struggle to deliver local economic benefits. The scale of the gap is stark. While the continent holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources, it accounts for just 2% of the world’s renewable energy workforce. That shows just how much the skills deficit could be holding us back.

Investment in training alone will not fix this. But the report finds that where local governments and industry have also addressed barriers such as childcare at TVET institutions, female participation and completion have measurably improved.

This is not charity, and it is not about compliance. It is smart economics. Women are producers, distributors, owners, and customers in exactly the value chains this transition depends on. Most clean cooking and solar home system customers are women, which is why distribution works when the agent looks like the customer. Refusing to invest in their skills is leaving money on the table.

In our own portfolio, I have seen how small the fix can be and how large the return. We have walked into factories as recently as 2020 where there were women on the line, yet no women’s restrooms. Poor lighting also made parts of the plant feel unsafe.

When we insist on fixing those things, and on employee share ownership, we are not running a welfare program. We are raising the bar for the whole workforce, men included. When you improve conditions for the people who make your product and serve your customer, you get a better product and better service. That is the return.

A 2024 report by Mastercard Foundation and McKinsey estimated that young women’s fuller economic participation could create 23 million jobs and add up to $287 billion to Africa’s economy by 2030. This is a five percent boost to GDP.

Their more sobering finding was that young women’s contribution to Africa’s GDP has gone backward, from 18 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2022. So, while we congratulate ourselves on participation rates, the trend is running against us.

What should those of us who allocate capital do? Stop treating workforce development as someone else’s line item and write gender covenants into deal conditions from the outset rather than as afterthoughts. Earmark a defined share of deployment capital for skills.

Fund the things that convert training into credentials and credentials into progression: recognition of prior learning for informal technicians, micro-credentials tied to national qualification levels, paid attachments rather than unpaid ones, childcare at training institutions, safe transportation for field roles, and women-only cohorts with employer-guaranteed placement.

Give micro-distributors the working capital to move off commission-only tiers, because women exit informal green roles at disproportionately higher rates when there is no progression pathway.

And change what we measure. Not how many women, but where they sit: who receives technical training, who moves from frontline sales into installation and maintenance, who advances into management, who owns the suppliers, and who earns more.

Africa cannot finance infrastructure and leave the workforce to chance. We have one chance to build these value chains from something close to scratch.

If we invest in the women who will run them, in their technical skills, their credentials, their conditions, and their ownership, the green transition could be the most powerful engine of women’s economic empowerment this continent has ever had. If we do not, we will have spent a great deal of money hiring tens of millions of women into the bottom of a new economy that looks remarkably like the old one.

 

By Tokunboh Ishmael, Managing Director and co-founder of Alitheia Capital, and FSD Africa Board member.

Investing at the edge of market formation

Posted on by Riitho

Africa is not short of capital. Between its sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurers and banks, the continent holds an estimated $4 trillion in domestic savings.

The difficulty is what carries it. As our Chief Investment Officer Anne-Marie Chidzero told the Allocator Media Podcast, African financial systems lack sufficient “pipes and filters and turbines” to move that money to where it is needed, equity for infrastructure, disaster-risk cover for smallholder farmers, aggregation vehicles that make small businesses investable at institutional scale.

Building those pipes is what FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi) was created to do. FSDAi the fund takes on early-stage risk that commercial investors will not, then works to make the resulting instrument replicable.

In the episode, Anne-Marie discusses the first African outcome-based conservation bond, the infrastructure equity fund structured with ARM-Harith so that Nigerian pension funds could participate, and the Africa Local Currency Bond Fund, where the mobilisation multiplier runs at roughly 10 to 1.

She is also candid about the limits. FSDAi has withdrawn from an investment during the approval process on finding that the market had developed its own appetite, and she is direct about how hard mobilisation is to attribute honestly.

 

“It takes patience… It takes a patient investor and it takes strong partnerships.” Anne-Marie Chidzero

 

Listen to the full conversation:

Spotify  •  Apple Podcasts

Behind the Investment: Africa’s first dedicated inclusive insurance venture fund

Posted on by Riitho

3iF Ventures is the first dedicated inclusive insurance venture fund set up for Africa’s insurance start-up ecosystem. On 5 June 2026 3iF Ventures announced a first close of USD 12 million, co-anchored by FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi) and ZEP-Re (PTA Reinsurance Company), deploying equity from pre-seed to Series B into technology-enabled businesses solving the continent’s insurance protection gap, with a pathway to a USD 30 million final close.

 

The market failure

Africa has a protection gap of staggering proportions. Over one billion people on the continent have no access to any form of insurance cover. The challenge is not simply one of low incomes. Three persistent structural barriers have long blocked uptake: awareness, accessibility, and affordability. Potential customers do not know insurance exists for their needs, cannot access it through familiar channels, and often cannot afford the products that are available.

The result is that large numbers of African households and small businesses remain entirely exposed to shocks such as illness, crop failure, asset loss and extreme weather that keep them locked in poverty or prevent them from investing and growing.

The insurtech sector has the potential to solve this at scale. However, it has attracted only fragmented capital: grants and early-stage philanthropic funding, with little institutional-grade venture investment. The infrastructure needed to back insurance innovators from inception through to Series B simply did not exist. That is the market failure 3iF Ventures was designed to correct.

 

What 3iF Ventures does differently

3iF Ventures is structured as a blended investment vehicle. It includes a catalytic capital junior tranche designed to absorb early risk and unlock participation from commercial investors who require a more conventional risk-return profile. Alongside its investment activity, the fund will operate a technical assistance facility sized at approximately 20 percent of total commitments — a deliberate recognition that early-stage insurance businesses need more than capital: they need product design support, regulatory navigation, and access to networks of primary insurers and reinsurers.

The fund’s investment thesis is organised around four thematic verticals: climate and disaster resilience; agriculture and rural livelihoods; digital health and wellbeing; and SMEs and asset protection. These categories correspond directly to the types of shock from which African households and businesses are most exposed and for which conventional insurance markets have offered the least.

3iF Ventures targets approximately 15 to 20 portfolio investments across African markets. It enters the market with a pre-qualified pipeline of 15 insurance ventures from 10 African countries that have already been assessed and are ready for capital deployment. That pipeline has been built, in significant part, through FSD Africa’s BimaLab Accelerator, which has supported 135 early-stage insurance businesses across the continent. 3iF Ventures, in this sense, is not starting from scratch. It is the institutional vehicle that turns years of market-building into deployable capital.

 

“3iF Ventures was conceived around the observation that scaling an insurtech takes capital plus operational support in equal measure. The junior tranche absorbs the early risk that has historically kept commercial investors out, and the technical assistance facility gives founders product design, regulatory navigation, and distribution reach alongside their equity. Just as important is the potential for partnerships with established insurers and reinsurers, which bring underwriting rigour and balance-sheet capacity to ventures building for scale, while those ventures give incumbents a route into new markets. That exchange is what lets a business move from inception through to Series B.”  Kweku Anyane-Lah, Investments Associate, FSDAi

 

Why FSDAi moved first

FSDAi committed to 3iF Ventures as one of its co-anchoring investors. That commitment served three distinct purposes.

The first was validation. Co-anchoring a first-of-its-kind fund signals to the broader market that the fund’s structure, governance, investment thesis, and management team have been assessed. That signal matters enormously in a first close, where the absence of a track record means that anchor investors are, in effect, lending credibility as much as capital.

The second was continuity. FSD Africa’s BimaLab Accelerator has built a strong pipeline of early-stage insurance businesses. Without a dedicated venture fund to receive those companies as they graduate from acceleration and need equity capital, much of that pipeline would remain commercially stranded. FSDAi’s investment in 3iF Ventures closes that loop.

The third was replicability. By co-anchoring alongside ZEP-Re, a leading reinsurer with operations in 45 African countries, FSDAi is demonstrating that a credible, commercially structured vehicle for inclusive insurance investment is achievable. Each successive close and successful portfolio company builds the evidence base that makes the asset class easier for other investors to enter.

 

” We anchored 3iF Ventures to prove the market while solving for the three barriers that have long defined Africa’s protection gap: awareness, accessibility, and affordability. The fund is a continuation of BimaLab, which has built a pipeline of innovative insurtechs addressing exactly those problems. 3iF Ventures bridges the critical early-stage funding gap these ventures face. Anchoring alongside ZEP-Re allows us to partner with an experienced incumbent and together support a manager to prove out the market. ” May Yego, Investment Manager, FSDAi

 

What this opens up

Over its lifetime, 3iF Ventures targets the issuance of over 5.9 million new insurance policies, improved financial resilience for over 3.5 million households and SMEs, and the creation, sustaining, or retention of over 1.7 million jobs. For a first fund of USD 30 million, these are significant outcomes and reflect the leverage that well-structured insurtech investments can generate.

What 3iF Ventures ultimately opens up is a new asset class. There is no comparable vehicle on the continent today. Its existence makes the next one easier to build, and the one after that easier still.

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About this series

Behind the Investment is FSDAi’s series on the decisions, structures, and signals behind our capital. Each post takes a single investment and unpacks the market gap it addresses, the thesis we underwrote, the risks we accepted, and the change we expect it to catalyse across Africa’s financial markets.

Contact: Joyce Waihiga, Manager, FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi).

Behind the Investment: Unlocking the low-income affordable rental housing market

Posted on by Allan Musumba

South Africa’s national housing gap is currently estimated at over 2[1]. The blueprint for closing this gap is not entirely missing. It is already being executed by a network of micro-developers and landowners in townships (dense urban communities where affordable rental housing is in short supply) who are actively building and managing housing for a massive, underserved segment of the population. While these builders hold the potential to solve the crisis, a disconnect between the informal housing market and traditional financial systems prevents them from scaling.

The market failure

Township landowners regularly generate stable, consistent cash flows from their rental properties, yet traditional lenders rarely recognise these cash flows as bankable. Because income is frequently informal, non-salaried, or supported by non-traditional documentation, commercial banks tend to assess these borrowers as non-creditworthy. The result is a structural financing gap: entrepreneurs who are already supplying affordable housing are unable to access the type of patient, fit-for-purpose capital needed to build safely, formalise their assets, and grow.

This constraint mirrors a broader hesitation at the institutional level. The perception of township housing as a high-risk, low-yield segment, combined with the structural exclusion of micro-developers from formal credit, has left a significant segment of the country’s housing sector chronically undercapitalised.

For FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi), this is precisely the kind of market failure our catalytic capital is designed to address: a real economy opportunity with proven demand, visible impact, and commercial potential, but without the financial infrastructure needed to attract institutional capital at scale.

What IndluLiving does differently

Founded in 2017, IndluLiving is a South African housing finance and development company that empowers township landowners and micro-developers to build, manage and earn from high-quality rental housing. The company achieves this through a tech-enabled, vertically integrated model that combines property finance, construction oversight, and property management. This end-to-end approach allows township rental assets to be originated, monitored, and managed with the transparency required to make them truly investable.

To date, the company has financed R311 million in housing projects, delivered more than 2,200 high-quality rental units in areas including Tembisa, Mamelodi, and Cosmo City. These developments have, in turn, supported over 1,000 short-term construction jobs and nearly 400 permanent roles through local SMEs. Crucially, IndluLiving’s portfolio challenges traditional risk perceptions: since inception, the company has recorded zero write-offs, a vacancy rate of 3.55%, and rental arrears of 1.41%.

This strong commercial track record is underpinned by two structural safeguards:

  • Controlled disbursement: Funds are disbursed directly through Imbha Construction, IndluLiving’s affiliated construction management firm. This ensures capital is used strictly for development purposes while guaranteeing that every unit is fully integrated into formal municipal water, electricity, and sanitation infrastructure.
  • Closed-loop technology: Rental collections and loan servicing are managed through a proprietary digital ecosystem. This automates payments, providing investors with complete transparency and property owners with a steady, predictable income stream.

The ZAR1 billion Indlu Blended Finance Programme, structured and arranged by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), is designed to formalise and scale this market. By utilising a construction warehousing facility, the programme originates and seasons development loans before securitising them into a structured bond, creating a clear pathway for mainstream institutional capital to flow into the township economy.

Why FSDAi invested

Through an aggregate investment of ZAR 151m (£6.9m), FSDAi is anchoring both the warehouse facility and the social bond. These commitments are deliberately highly additional: they absorb risk at different stages of the financing structure so that commercial investors can participate with greater confidence as the portfolio seasons and scales.

During the high-risk, early-stage construction phase, FSDAi’s patient capital finances projects before properties are stabilised and income-generating – a stage most commercial investors avoid. This helps create a pipeline of seasoned assets and associated cashflows for securitisation.  In the social bond, FSDAi’s co-investment takes on initial financial risk, giving mainstream commercial investors greater confidence to participate.

The signalling effect was immediate. FSDAi’s early-stage presence helped draw in First National Bank (FNB), which committed R400 million in long-term financing, and the FirstRand Foundation, which provided a R30 million concessional loan to establish the warehousing facility.  This is the market-development role in practice: catalytic capital reducing perceived risk, validating a new structure, and helping convert an overlooked market into one that mainstream finance can begin to underwrite.

“What makes this transaction compelling is that it takes mainstream capital markets tools — construction warehousing, loan seasoning, and securitisation — and engineers them to work in one of the most underserved segments of the economy. By anchoring the warehouse facility and the mezzanine risk, we are building an originate-and-distribute pipeline that converts fragmented rental cash flows into an institutional-grade, asset-backed instrument. Get the structuring right here, and affordable township housing stops being a niche impact allocation and becomes a repeatable, investable asset class across the continent.” Nes Ruwo, Principal, Private Capital Mobilisation

What this opens up

The establishment of this facility unlocks immediate, measurable scale. IndluLiving has already identified a project pipeline exceeding R915 million over the next 12 to 24 months, with a specific target to mobilise R500 million for township property entrepreneurs within the first year alone. This warehousing mechanism is projected to support the construction of 1,000 to 1,200 new rental units, providing safe, regulated, and well-located homes for an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 low- to-medium-income tenants.

The investment also carries significant potential for transformative gender outcomes. Currently, 64% of IndluLiving’s landowners are women, and 55% of its property partners are young women under the age of 35. By investing at the structural level of the warehousing facility, FSDAi gains the strategic leverage to help shape more progressive gender standards for inclusive housing finance. This partnership will elevate gender outcome metrics beyond simply tracking the number of female borrowers. Instead, the focus will expand to monitoring sophisticated indicators such as long-term repayment patterns, asset growth, tenant profiles, and the overall trajectory of improved livelihoods across South Africa’s townships.

This growth is also designed to be sustainable. Looking forward, IndluLiving is actively pursuing IFC EDGE certification to integrate green building standards across its portfolio, creating a pathway to attract dedicated climate and green finance into township developments.

Far beyond financing individual housing projects, the Indlu Blended Finance Programme marks an important market-building milestone. It shows how structured finance can connect informal real-estate cash flows with formal capital markets, while preserving the social purpose of affordable rental housing. By bridging the gap between institutional liquidity and undercapitalised township economies, this investment offers a replicable blueprint for how commercial viability and deep social impact can reinforce each other across Africa.

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Behind the Investment is FSDAi’s series on the decisions, structures, and signals behind our capital. Each post takes a single investment and unpacks the market gap it addresses, the thesis we underwrote, the risks we accepted, and the change we expect it to catalyse across Africa’s financial markets.

[1] Department of Human Settlements, response to Parliamentary Question NW535, Parliamentary Monitoring Group, 20 March 2023

Behind the Investment: Backing East Africa’s missing middle

Posted on by Kihingu Inc

Small and growing businesses (SGBs) are the backbone of East Africa’s economies. They drive employment, anchor local value chains in food, manufacturing and trade, and sustain communities across the region. Yet, for the most part, they cannot access the finance they need to grow.

FSD Africa Investments’ (FSDAi) investment in iungo Capital through its Nyala Facility is a direct response to that reality.

The market failure

The financing gap facing small and growing businesses has proven stubbornly persistent.  Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) are often too large and operationally complex for many microfinance institutions, whose lending methodologies, check sizes and products were primarily designed to serve sole proprietors and household enterprises. Yet, they are too early-stage and under-collateralised for commercial banks, which require documented cash flows, formal collateral, and operating histories that most SGBs simply cannot provide.

The result is a missing middle: a segment of businesses with genuine growth potential and real economic weight, systematically locked out of affordable finance. Across East Africa, this gap has constrained job creation, suppressed local value chains, and left labour-intensive sectors such as agri-processing, light manufacturing and trade chronically undercapitalised. This structural failure penalises not just individual businesses, but also the broader economies that depend on them.

What iungo does differently

Operating across Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, iungo Capital provides USD-denominated loans of up to US$500,000 to early-stage SGBs. These loans are structured for up to 36 months and paired with hands-on technical assistance covering business operations, financial management, and ESG compliance.

Rather than treating these businesses as high-risk exceptions, iungo has spent eight years developing the systems, market intelligence, and sector expertise required to assess, invest in and manage them effectively. This track record demonstrates that disciplined, fit-for-purpose and locally-rooted lending to this segment can be both highly impactful and commercially sound.

Furthermore, iungo applies a rigorous gender-lens investment framework that goes beyond basic compliance:

  • Over 80% of its portfolio meets at least one 2X Challenge criterion.
  • The firm proactively sets and monitors gender-outcome targets for portfolio companies, backed by dedicated technical support to support implementation
  • Internally, 60% of iungo’s own team are women, and the firm recently promoted local East African staff to partner-level positions as a deliberate commitment to building regional leadership rather than managing East Africa from the outside. 

Why FSDAi invested

FSDAi’s US$1.25 million equity commitment is made through the Nyala Facility, which provides patient, flexible capital to Alternative Local Capital Providers with a gender lens investment strategy. These are locally anchored fund managers building the financial infrastructure that conventional lenders leave behind.

Importantly, this investment is highly catalytic. Despite its strong track record, iungo had reached a structural ceiling: financial covenants on its existing debt restricted further borrowing without a fresh equity injection, and its corporate structure was deterring the institutional investors needed to scale. While prospective co-investors were interested, they were waiting for a credible first-mover to de-risk the process. This investment is intended to have a strong demonstration effect. By validating an open-ended fund model focused on Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs), FSDAi aims to demonstrate that SGBs are an investable asset class. In turn, building market confidence, encouraging replication and crowding in additional institutional capital to a segment that is economically significant but chronically underserved.

FSDAi’s commitment breaks that deadlock.

“FSDAi’s investment helped unlock a key constraint for iungo. By adding to its equity base, we helped create the foundation for iungo to raise additional debt capital and finance more small and growing businesses across East Africa. This is the catalytic role we want to play: backing strong local capital providers at the point where our capital can crowd in others and expand access to appropriate finance for underserved businesses.” Zee de Gersigny, Investment Principal for Early-Stage Ventures at FSDAi.

What this opens up

This investment is intended to have a strong demonstration effect. By validating an open-ended fund model focused on SGBs, FSDAi aims to show that SGBs are an investable asset class — building market confidence, encouraging replication, and crowding in additional institutional capital to a segment that is economically significant but chronically underserved.

Over the investment period, iungo is expected to finance at least 30 businesses, support the creation or preservation of 800 jobs, and ensure that at least 60% of those businesses are founded, owned, or led by women.

That demonstration effect is already taking shape. FSDAi’s catalytic commitment is expected to unlock significantly larger pools of institutional capital enabling Iungo to significantly expand its operations and reach across East Africa.

iungo’s trajectory, evolving from a small, concessionally funded vehicle to a properly structured, institutionally backed capital provider, is the type of market development FSDAi exists to accelerate. By backing iungo at this pivotal stage, FSDAi is helping lay the groundwork to prove what local capital providers can achieve, signalling a promising new direction for SGB finance across East Africa.

About this series

Behind the Investment is FSDAi’s series on the decisions, structures, and signals behind our capital. Each post takes a single investment and unpacks the market gap it addresses, the thesis we underwrote, the risks we accepted, and the change we expect it to catalyse across Africa’s financial markets.

Contact: Joyce Waihiga, Manager, FSD Africa Investments.

 

Responsible investing turns 20. The next chapter must be written where the risks are sharpest, and the opportunity greatest.

Posted on by Riitho

An FSDAi perspective on the PRI’s Future of Responsible Investing report, on the occasion of the PRI’s 20th anniversary panel held in Johannesburg on 14 May 2026.

Twenty years ago, a small group of asset owners signed the Principles for Responsible Investment and changed the language of finance. Today, the practices they helped codify are the operating vocabulary of a global industry. This year, the PRI marked that anniversary by asking a harder question: what does the next twenty years require? 

Its new report, The Future of Responsible Investing (FoRI), distils the views of 120 organisations into two clear ambitions. First, that responsible investing becomes all investing: a core discipline of every CIO and investment team, not a parallel track run by a sustainability unit. Second, that responsible investing evolves to confront the system-level risks, from climate and nature to demographics, geopolitics and the governance of new technologies, that now define the operating environment for long-term capital. 

Both ambitions matter to FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi). We operate where global capital meets African opportunity, and we believe that the next chapter of responsible investing will be written in the markets where the Principles have been hardest to apply. 

FSDAi’s CIO, Anne-Marie Chidzero, speaking on the panel at PRI’s 20th anniversary celebration.

 

FSDAi’s Chief Investment Officer, Anne-Marie Chidzero, joined panellists from 27Four, Old Mutual and Value Capital Partners, moderated by the PRI’s Nathan Fabian, to debate exactly that question. Her message was direct: 

“Responsible investing must become all investing, and Africa cannot be left out. Climate, nature, demographics, the governance of AI: these are not future risks on our continent. They are daily life. The real opportunity is to stop treating Africa as the hardest place to invest responsibly, and start treating it as the place where the next generation of responsible investing gets built.”

Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investment Officer, FSD Africa Investments.

Where FSDAi’s work meets the FoRI agenda 

The report identifies five practical actions for asset owners who want to lead the next two decades: speaking out on shared interests, raising the visibility of CEOs and CIOs, being transparent with investment managers, engaging policymakers, and supporting innovation through capital allocation. The last of these lands closest to our mandate, and it works on two fronts.  

The first is the call to use innovative financing mechanisms, including blended finance, to channel more capital into emerging markets. At FSDAi we deploy catalytic capital to do exactly that, building investable opportunities in green finance, capital markets development and digital finance that institutional investors can credibly follow.  

The second is being one of the first to take risk early where commercial capital will not yet go. By backing novel instruments, early-stage funds and underserved markets, FSDAi creates the track record, structures and conditions that allow far larger pools of capital to follow. This is responsible investing as system-building. 

What we want from the next 20 years 

The FoRI report is candid about what asset owners need from the PRI: amplifying asset owner voices, including those beyond the largest northern institutions; convening with purpose; supporting investor education; and engaging policymakers while respecting regional context. 

From an African vantage point, those priorities are essential. The PRI’s “broad tent” only stays broad if it accommodates investors where regulatory frameworks are still maturing, data is patchy, and the trade-offs between development, decarbonisation and decent work are most acute. Africa is also home to a rapidly growing pool of pension and sovereign capital. The next two decades will determine whether it is mobilised for long-term, sustainable returns, or allocated to the same old playbook. 

We agree with the report’s central conclusion: the original six Principles remain fit for purpose. The task now is interpretation, application and discipline, and no asset owner can do it alone. FSDAi is committed to playing its part: as a development finance investor putting catalytic capital where the system needs it most, as a partner to African capital market builders, and as a PRI signatory that intends to be heard.  

 

Responsible investing is no longer a choice. It is the only investing that makes sense. 

 

 

The PRI report, “The Future of Responsible Investing” (April 2026), is available at unpri.org. 

Nature is Africa’s economic infrastructure; investment models need to catch up

Posted on by Kihingu Inc

Across Africa, conversations about nature are still too often framed as a trade-off. Conservation versus growth. Ecosystems versus jobs. Sustainability versus industrialisation.

But that framing misses something fundamental. For many African economies, nature is not separate from development. It is the infrastructure development depends on.

Agriculture, fisheries, forestry, tourism and mining all rely on functioning natural systems. So do energy production, water security and export supply chains. According to the African Development Bank, an estimated 62% of Africa’s GDP[1] is moderately or highly dependent on nature and the services ecosystems provide. In many countries, agriculture alone employs more than half the workforce and remains central to export earnings, food security and rural livelihoods.

The idea that Africa must choose between development and nature is therefore a false one. Development-first is nature-first. This matters because the economic consequences of environmental decline are no longer theoretical. They are already being felt across the continent’s real economy.

This is already visible across African supply chains. Coffee and cocoa producers are dealing with changing rainfall patterns and declining soil quality. Horticulture exporters face growing pressure on water systems. Fisheries and tourism economies depend on healthy ecosystems that are becoming increasingly stressed. Across sectors, environmental degradation is raising costs, weakening productivity and making supply chains less reliable meaning nature loss is now a commercial risk.

The World Bank estimates that climate change could push up to 86 million Africans into internal migration by 2050[2], driven in part by pressure on water systems, declining agricultural productivity and ecosystem stress. Meanwhile, AFDB estimates that over 45% of the world’s degraded land is located in Africa[3], which undoubtedly has significant consequences for food systems and economic resilience.

Yet finance has not fully caught up with this reality. Globally, billions of dollars continue to flow into activities linked to deforestation, land degradation and unsustainable extraction, while “nature-first” enterprises, those which are working to restore landscapes, strengthen soil health or build more resilient supply chains, often struggle to access capital.

Part of the problem is perception. Nature-first enterprises are still frequently seen as niche, high-risk or difficult to measure. Investors are often more comfortable financing extractive models with familiar returns than businesses whose value depends on long-term resilience and natural capital.

But this is beginning to change. Investors are increasingly recognising that natural systems underpin productivity, stability and long-term economic performance in much the same way as roads, ports or energy infrastructure do.

The challenge now is building investable models that connect environmental resilience to commercial value.

Across Africa, there is no shortage of enterprises already working in regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, ecosystem restoration and resilient supply chains, meaning that as well as generating revenues they are also delivering improvements to the health of the soil and water as well as increased biodiversity. The bigger problem is that many remain stuck in the “missing middle”: too advanced for grant funding, but not yet structured in ways that mainstream investors understand or feel comfortable backing.

This is part of what initiatives such as the Nature-First Innovation Lab (NFIL), launched by FSD Africa in partnership with the African Natural Capital Alliance (ANCA) and Systemiq, are trying to test. NFIL is a new accelerator programme designed to help projects from across Africa, including Tanzania, Ethiopia and Malawi, that have already moved beyond concept or feasibility stage, to become investable, scalable businesses through a tailored package of capital and hands-on support. The pilot will focus on enterprises which have embedded regenerative practices into agricultural, blue (ocean and coastal) economy and broader natural‑resource supply chains. This includes, for example, regenerative agriculture projects, seaweed and aquaculture businesses, sustainable forestry, and other nature-first production systems that generate both commercial returns and measurable environmental benefits.

Importantly, the programme is focused on business models where the primary revenue stream is not carbon finance but rather the underlying products, services and supply chains themselves – for instance from being able to charge a premium for produce grown according to regenerative agriculture principles. While carbon markets continue to play an important role, they are already supported through dedicated initiatives such as FSD Africa’s Carbon Accelerator Programme for the Environment (CAPE), which focuses on high-integrity nature-based carbon projects. NFIL aims to help demonstrate that a wider range of nature-first business models can also become commercially viable and attractive to mainstream investors through the strength of their underlying products, services and supply chains. The ultimate aim is to demonstrate how nature-first business models can support both commercial returns and long-term resilience.

That evidence matters. Markets move when they can see viable examples, functioning transactions and measurable outcomes. Nature-first enterprise cannot remain a theoretical conversation held only in climate forums or policy documents. It needs to become part of how African economies think about competitiveness, productivity and long-term growth.

Africa also has an opportunity many advanced economies no longer do: the chance to build differently before environmental damage becomes even more expensive to reverse. Many wealthier economies developed through models that treated natural systems as effectively unlimited. They are now spending heavily to restore degraded land, polluted waterways and weakened ecosystems after decades of over-extraction. African countries are not locked into the same legacy systems. That creates an opportunity to build growth models that recognise nature not as a constraint on development, but as one of its foundations.

Putting nature on the balance sheet means recognising that healthy soils, functioning water systems and resilient ecosystems support jobs, exports, productivity and economic stability. It means understanding that environmental resilience and economic resilience are increasingly the same conversation.

Development-first is nature-first. The countries and investors that understand this early will be better placed to build growth that lasts.

 

[1] https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/report-reveals-62-of-african-gdp-reliant-on-nature-services/1t4slt5

[2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050

[3] https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/topics/desertification-and-land-degradation

Nature-first enterprise could become Tanzania’s next investable growth story

Posted on by Kihingu Inc

Tanzania’s growth ambitions depend heavily on the health of its natural systems. Agriculture, rural livelihoods, water security, tourism and export competitiveness all rely on functioning soil, water and ecosystems. Yet nature is still too often treated as separate from economic development, rather than the infrastructure that makes development possible.

The idea that Tanzania must choose between development and nature is false. Development-first is nature-first.

The country’s economy is deeply tied to natural capital. Agriculture alone employs roughly two-thirds of the workforce and contributes around a quarter of GDP[1]. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, agricultural export earnings reached US$3.54 billion in 2023/24[2]. Behind those figures sits an enormous dependence on healthy land, reliable rainfall, water systems and productive ecosystems.

This is why nature should be understood as economic infrastructure, not simply an environmental concern. When soils degrade, productivity falls. When water systems come under stress, farming, processing and transport become more expensive and less reliable. The effects are felt across entire value chains, from smallholder farmers and rural communities to processors, exporters and buyers.

This is already visible in some of Tanzania’s most important agricultural industries. Coffee and horticulture, for example, depend heavily on soil health, water stewardship and stable growing conditions. When those systems weaken, yields suffer and supply chains become more vulnerable. But when farmers and businesses invest in more resilient production practices, the benefits are economic as well as environmental: stronger productivity, more reliable supply and better long-term competitiveness.

Tanzania also has an opportunity to avoid some of the costly mistakes made elsewhere. Many advanced economies built growth models that treated natural systems as unlimited resources. They are now spending heavily to restore degraded land, polluted water systems and damaged ecosystems. Tanzania is not locked into that path. It has the chance to build growth in a way that protects the natural systems its economy already depends on.

The challenge is that finance has not fully caught up with this reality. Globally, large amounts of capital still flow into activities that degrade forests, soils and water systems, while many “nature-first” businesses, which are working to protect and restore nature, struggle to attract investment. Part of the problem is perception. Nature-first enterprises are often seen as too risky, too difficult to measure or too slow to generate returns.

Yet the risks of ignoring nature are becoming harder to ignore. Businesses are already seeing the effects of declining soil quality, water stress and supply disruptions. Investors are beginning to recognise that natural systems affect productivity, resilience and long-term commercial performance just as much as roads, power or logistics do.

Many promising businesses remain stuck in the “missing middle”: too advanced for early grant funding, but not yet structured in ways commercial investors understand. The issue is often not a lack of potential, but a lack of proof points, financial support and investment models that connect environmental resilience to commercial value.

That is part of what we will be testing with the launch of the Nature-First Innovation Lab (NFIL) – a new accelerator programme designed to help projects that have already moved beyond concept or feasibility stage to become investable, scalable businesses through a tailored package of capital and hands-on support. The pilot is inviting applications from enterprises in Tanzania which have embedded regenerative practices into agricultural, blue (ocean and coastal) economy and broader natural‑

This matters because the conversation about nature should not sit outside Tanzania’s economic agenda. Agriculture that depletes soil weakens food security and future productivity. Supply chains that ignore water and biodiversity risks become less resilient over time. Businesses that improve land, strengthen productivity and support rural livelihoods should not remain invisible to finance simply because markets have not yet developed the right ways to assess them.

Putting nature on the balance sheet means recognising that healthy ecosystems support jobs, exports, productivity and economic stability. Tanzania has an opportunity to help prove that nature-first enterprise is not anti-growth, but part of building growth that lasts.

 

[1] https://www.tanzaniainvest.com/agriculture?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[2] https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/tanzania-steps-up-drive-to-boost-farm-exports-eliminate-trade-barriers-5145820?utm_source=chatgpt.com

 

UK–Ghana Growth Partnership to drive jobs, investment and skills

Posted on by Kihingu Inc

The UK and Ghana have signed a new Growth Partnership aimed at delivering tangible benefits for people and businesses in Ghana, including more jobs, stronger infrastructure and better access to skills and education. The Partnership will build on the up to £215 millions of deals signed as part of the Ghana Investment Summit in London.

Signed today during President John Dramani Mahama’s official visit to the United Kingdom, the Partnership sets out how the two countries will work together from 2026 to 2028 to support private‑sector‑led growth, boost trade and unlock new investment.

The Partnership focuses on four priority areas: attracting private investment and finance; making it easier for Ghanaian businesses to trade; supporting infrastructure and industrial growth; and expanding skills and education partnerships.

It is backed by a series of practical initiatives designed to deliver real results, including:

  • new jobs and a stronger maritime sector: a £101million ($137 million) UK-supported project, to develop the first commercial-scale ship repair and dry-docking facility in the Gulf of Guinea.  The Takoradi Floating Dock Project (ShipRite) is backed by a consortium of investors including UK co-owned Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) and delivered in partnership with the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA)
  • it is expected to create up to 430 direct jobs, with around 30% taken up by women; while positioning Ghana as a regional maritime hub and reducing emissions by overall travel distances.  The project also pioneers the involvement of local pension funds in infrastructure finance in the region
  • climate‑aligned infrastructure: a £5 million UK-supported (ODA) Green Project Preparation Facility, hosted by Financial Sector Deepening Africa (FSD Africa) and in partnership with the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund, designed to help transform viable ideas from private and public sector developers into investable climate-focused  infrastructure projects, with the potential to unlock up to £180 million in deals over three years, supporting opportunities for UK firms, supporting the Government of Ghana’s priority infrastructure agenda
  • mobilising global capital for Ghana’s green economy: Mere Plantations has announced plans to scale up plantation and reforestation activities in Ghana, including the use of new technologies such as biochar to enhance environmental impact and sustainability. As a major milestone, the company will launch a £85 million reforestation investment fund listed in the UK, the first Article 9 “dark green” fund on the London Stock Exchange’s new Private Markets platform. Backed by the Ghana Forestry Commission, the fund will channel international capital into high‑integrity reforestation and carbon projects in Ghana, supporting jobs, restoring degraded land and positioning Ghana as a leading destination for nature‑based investment
  • new partnership to help implement the Ghana AI Strategy, as part of a wider set of new Science and Technology collaboration, backed by £6 million UK funding. During the Investment Summit, Minister for Communications, Digital Transformation and Innovation will discuss how UK expertise can help Ghanaian institutions unlock the benefits of AI. Ten new Physics Partnerships have been funded in partnership with UK Research and Innovation driving collaboration across universities
  • restoring forests and livelihoods: Rainforest Builder to inject £9 million in new investment in forest restoration in the Oti Region, supporting environmental protection and local jobs.
  • skills and education opportunities: the publication of Transnational Education guidelines, opening new partnerships between UK and Ghanaian institutions and supporting access to higher‑quality education and training
  • stronger healthcare skills: a £4 million, five‑year partnership between a UK training provider and Ghana‑based Mangel Klicks to deliver specialist clinical engineering training, strengthening healthcare systems in Ghana and supporting skills development across the wider region

The Partnership is signed as the UK and Ghana mark five years of the UK–Ghana Trade Partnership Agreement. Since the Agreement entered into force, bilateral trade has grown to around £1.6 billion, an increase of 12.5% since 2024. It also builds on the strong investment pipeline established by British International Investment (BII) whose development finance investment into Ghana stands at approximately £140 million, including Maa Grace, a UK-Ghanaian export-focused garments business backed through Growth Investment Partners (GIP) Ghana.

H.E Dr Christian Rogg, British High Commissioner to Ghana, said:

This Growth Partnership is about real change people can see and feel. It means more skilled jobs, stronger ports and transport links, better access to finance, and new opportunities for young people and women across Ghana.

By working with Ghanaian partners and backing private investment, we are supporting growth that is sustainable, inclusive and led by Ghana’s own priorities.

Together, these initiatives demonstrate a strengthened UK–Ghana Growth Partnership that is:

  • mobilising investment at scale
  • expanding and diversifying trade
  • supporting infrastructure for industrial transformation

This partnership underscores the UK’s commitment as a long-term partner in Ghana’s economic transformation, while unlocking new commercial opportunities across priority sectors.

Further information

  • Ghana is one of West Africa’s most stable democracies and plays a leading role in the region’s economy and building greater security
  • the UK–Ghana Growth Partnership complements existing trade arrangements and builds on long‑standing people‑to‑people and business links between the two countries
  • the Partnership is designed to support a predictable environment that encourages responsible, sustainable investment
  • about the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF): GIIF is a Government of Ghana initiative designed to facilitate and manage infrastructure investments across key sectors of the Ghanaian economy
  • about the UK–Ghana Trade Partnership Agreement: The UK–Ghana Trade Partnership Agreement entered into force in 2021 and provides a framework for trade between the two countries following the UK’s departure from the European Union
  • about the Dry dock project, delivered in partnership with the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA): PIDG’s investment complements equity investments by ARM-Harith Infrastructure Fund and the project developer, Prime Meridian Docks Ghana Ltd, and unlocks senior and mezzanine financing from the African Export-Import Bank, the African Development Bank, the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB), Petra Pension Schemes, and Origen Private Debt Fund
  • about Mere Plantations: Mere Plantations is a UK-based forestry and investment company specialising in sustainable plantation development and reforestation projects, working in partnership with the Ghana Forestry Commission to restore degraded land, generate carbon credits and support local jobs. Mere Plantations is scaling reforestation in Ghana while preparing to list an Article 9 “dark green” fund on the London Stock Exchange, marking a significant step in mobilising international capital into the country’s green economy. The initiative is also a launch client for the LSE’s new Private Markets platform

Article Reposted from: gov.uk