Country: Cote d’Ivoire

Long-term finance in Côte d’Ivoire – country diagnostic report

The Africa Long-Term Finance (LTF) Initiative seeks to rebalance the focus toward this perspective by (a) assembling data and establishing an
“LTF Scoreboard,” on which individual countries are benchmarked against one another on the availability of LTF, and (b) undertaking country diagnostics in a number of African countries to identify specific hurdles faced in deepening markets for LTF and ways such hurdles could be overcome. This report is the first of these country-diagnostic reports.

This country report on Côte d’Ivoire focuses on infrastructure, housing, and enterprise finance. It applies a flexible definition of LTF that reflects the differing productive life of assets being financed, which may vary from 20 to 30 years in the infrastructure and housing sectors and 5 years or less for enterprises.

Given scarce fiscal resources and the underdeveloped status of domestic financial markets, the report identifies sizable long-term financing gaps in the infrastructure, housing, and enterprise sec

Local currency solution for Multilateral Development Bank Portfolio Transfer: Feasibility Study

In June 2023, FSD Africa was awarded funding from the MDB Challenge Fund to develop a project focused on a ‘Local Currency Solution for Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) Portfolio Transfer’ (the project). FSD Africa’s proposed solution aims to empower MDBs and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) to provide more financing to developing and emerging economies. This is aligned with the recommendations of the G20 Independent Review of MDBs’ Capital Adequacy Framework (CAF) report. The focus area is on promoting financial innovation and development of new instruments to catalyse private investment.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for transferring asset portfolios funded by multilateral development banks (MDBs) to domestic institutional investors in Africa through a local currency solution.

The primary aim is to expand the scope of MDBs’ investments by freeing up capital while benefiting local institutional investors and capital market development and reducing the foreign exchange risk of those benefiting from the investments funded by MDBs.

The study focuses on markets in East and West Africa with relatively deep institutional investor bases, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal.

FSDAi Nyala Facility extends USD 1 million to WIC Capital to boost gender lens investing and increase financing to Small and Growing Businesses

Posted on by TIMOTHYRADIER

Senegal, 5th December 2023 – FSDAi Nyala Facility BV has extended a USD 1 million loan to WIC Capital, a local capital provider investing in Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire that focuses on financing women-owned and managed Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs).

WIC Capital is led by Ms. Evelyne Dioh Simpa, a Fund Manager with a wealth of finance experience and supported by a robust team and board. WIC Capital has a strong alignment with FSDAi Nyala Facility due to its unwavering commitment to promoting access to finance for female owned SGBs needed to expand their businesses.

For example, in Senegal, a mere 3.5% of women entrepreneurs access credit from financial institutions. WIC Capital focuses exclusively on investing in businesses owned and/ or led by women, demonstrating that the financing gap for female-owned enterprises in West Africa can be addressed. Furthermore, WIC Capital stands out for its innovative product structures tailored to local SGBs. Notably, its origins in an exclusive women’s angel network, adds to its uniqueness within the FSDAi Nyala Facility portfolio, making it an invaluable learning opportunity for all investors in the small and growing businesses investing ecosystem.

Women entrepreneurs in Africa not only encounter challenges when it comes to access to finance but also grapple with the scarcity of platforms offering the essential knowledge and assistance required for the expansion of their businesses.

WIC Capital works with early-stage, women-owned/ led enterprises to provide first-time external capital as well as business training and mentorship. Also, WIC Capital leverages a large network of successful women entrepreneurs and civic leaders to co-fund and support these emerging businesses. The business training and mentorship is provided by the WIC Académie through a technical assistance program. Alongside the women’s angel network, other funders of WIC Capital include foundations, multilateral donor agencies, and development financial institutions.

“Through its investment in WIC, FSDAi is backing an African women-led capital allocator with deep local angel networks, a creative funding structure and financing solution for small and growing businesses in West Africa. With our investment, WIC can position itself to attract bigger pools of capital to expand its strategy in Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire,” noted Anne-Marie Chidzero, Chief Investment Officer at FSD Africa Investments.

“I am proud that the UK is investing US$1 million in WIC Capital through Financial Sector Deepening Africa Investments. I have seen first-hand WIC Capital’s inspiring work and know that they are a deeply impact-focused organisation. They support young female entrepreneurs in a market where access to funding is a huge barrier for their growth. At the heart of building sustainable and inclusive businesses lies the need to advance gender equality through women’s economic empowerment. I look forward to continuing our collaboration to create jobs and empower Senegal’s talented women,” noted Juliette John, UK Ambassador to Senegal.

“FSDAi is playing a critical role in the development of an emerging asset class of small business growth funds Africa, particularly women-led funds. The funding of WIC Capital represents an important confirmation of WIC’s innovative approach to financing early-stage women businesses in West Africa.  By melding their business development services, women investment club mentoring with investment capital, WIC provides a comprehensive approach to the challenges that to date have constrained Africa’s women-led businesses to growth and thrive.  We believe this commitment will be the foundation upon which other DFIs and local institutional capital holders can also provide funding to WIC Capital and other innovative local capital managers seeking to invest in Africa’s women businesses,” noted Drew von Glahn, Executive Director of the Collaborative for Frontier Finance.

“WIC Capital’s mission aligns with FSDAi’s desire to address the disfunctions of African capital markets, which include the structural barriers that small businesses face in accessing financing, specifically when they are women led. This partnership will be catalytic in the development of a local capital provider that has the potential to profoundly change the local ecosystem, by providing risk capital and business support to women led small and growing businesses (SGBs), with the ultimate goal of increasing women’s agency and economic benefit. With this investment, we are closing our first fund, and we believe this partnership will help accelerate the mobilization of our second fund to serve SMEs generating a strong impact in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire,” concluded Evelyne Dioh, Managing Director of WIC Capital.

Climate finance innovation for Africa

The African continent presents a massive investment opportunity for investors to advance climate solutions in the coming decade, however, a set of barriers to finance have stifled requisite investment to date. In this new report, in collaboration with Climate Finance Innovation for Africa and Climate Policy Initiative, we provide a framework for how innovation in financing structures can leverage strategic deployment of public capital to ‘crowd-in’ private investment at levels not yet seen.

This paper focuses primarily on climate mitigation, which represents the largest investment opportunity for private investors. We refer audiences focused specifically on adaptation to the work done by the Global Center on Adaptation and Climate Policy Initiative on Financial Innovation for Climate Adaptation in Africa.

Launch of country diagnostic report on long-term finance in Côte d’Ivo

Posted on by Kihingu Inc

Together with our partners the African Development Bank, the German Economic Development Cooperation (implemented by GIZ), the Making
Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) and Centre for Affordable Housing, we recently launched a country diagnostic report on long-term finance (LTF) in Côte d’Ivoire.

This country report focuses on infrastructure, housing, and enterprise finance in Côte d’Ivoire and applies a flexible definition of LTF that reflects the differing productive life of assets being financed, which may vary from 20 to 30 years in the infrastructure and housing sectors and 5 years or less for enterprises.

Given scarce fiscal resources and the underdeveloped status of domestic financial markets, the report identifies sizable long-term financing gaps in the infrastructure, housing, and enterprise sectors.

The Africa Long-Term Finance (LTF) Initiative seeks to rebalance the focus toward this perspective by (a) assembling data and establishing an “LTF Scoreboard,” on which individual countries are benchmarked against one another on the availability of LTF, and (b) undertaking country diagnostics in a number of African countries to identify specific hurdles faced in deepening markets for LTF and ways such hurdles could be overcome. This report is the first of these country-diagnostic reports.

We started the Africa LTF Initiative to assemble information about the provision of LTF across countries in Africa as well as to provide guidance as to how the public and private sectors can work together in strengthening the provision of LTF.

A review of some of Africa’s housing finance markets

Posted on by Kihingu Inc
Overview

Across Africa, the residential investment opportunity is increasingly driving conversations about economic growth. While the definition of who is middle class and how many such households there are continue, the fact of Africa’s rising population and rapid urbanisation is palpable in its cities where the inadequate housing conditions of the majority are obvious.

For every problem, there is an opportunity for a solution, and in increasingly creative ways, this is what Africa’s housing investors are finding.

Most investment funds currently active were initiated when the African growth trajectory was on an upward curve. The past year has been challenging, however. Still among the fastest growing continents, Africa has seen its growth and development prospects seriously challenged by global economic pressures, the commodities downturn and the slowing Chinese economy. Where the prospects of oil and gas discoveries dominated the news five years ago, in 2016 it is their loss in value ng governments reconsider their economic development strategies. The key challenge in this environment, is economic diversification. Can housing contribute towards that opportunity?

Governments can contribute significantly to a developer’s ability to deliver affordable housing at scale, by paying attention to the rough spots along the housing value chain: the availability of land, its servicing (especially water and electricity), and its registration;
the availability of domestic building materials and a functioning construction sector; the time it takes to get administrative approvals for the building process, and the cost of such approvals; the taxation, finance and macro-economic framework; and the functioning of the labour market, among so many other factors.

Read full report from”http://housingfinanceafrica.org”>CAHF here.,

The growth of micro-insurance: expanding financial inclusion

Posted on by TIMOTHYRADIER

Access to insurance across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is still very low and estimated to cover only around 5.4% of the population (approx. 61.9m people)[1]. Most of this coverage is represented by life insurance products, the penetration of which still pales in comparison to most developed markets. In these markets, insurance products are part of the financial landscape and are more of an expectation rather than the exception. However, attitudes of insurers in SSA are changing. Financial Sector Deepening Africa’s (FSDA) work with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has shown that insurers across the continent are looking to serve the market on a larger scale and through new channels.

Financial Inclusion has come a long way. Not long ago, the widespread definition of what it means to be “included” would only focus on access to a bank account. Thankfully, that notion has changed. A broader definition of the term has led to the development of many more services and ways to help lift the poor out of poverty – mobile money being the most prominent example.

Over the years, donor organisations (and market players) have understood that bank accounts are not enough to replace the abundance of products currently being used by people at the bottom of the pyramid. An in-depth look at the financial choices made by Kenyans in 2014 showed that the average household uses 14 different financial products.[2] Basically, the majority of people who have informal jobs are constantly juggling financial products, just to get by. About half of the respondents surveyed had an insurance product (directly or through welfare groups). However, effective use of formal insurance was low.

Improving and expanding insurance products for the poor

FSDA is in partnership with the ILO to expand microinsurance penetration in SSA thus helping poor people protect themselves against economic shocks. The FSDA funded project is looking to develop and grow new and existing microinsurance products across SSA[3], focused on the needs of the customer at or near the bottom of the pyramid. Together with the ILO’s Impact Insurance Facility, FSDA will work with five insurers and/or distributors in four countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia. The project will provide an inclusive financial service to more than one million low income people and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) who will gain access to insurance products that protect them from life’s surprises.

Creating relevant microinsurance products

Most of the continent’s large insurers are bureaucratic and focus on standard general and life insurance products. Not only are these products unaffordable to the bottom of the pyramid, but most people do not qualify for the products as they usually require formal employment. In a context where informal employment is estimated to be between 60% and 80% across Sub-Saharan Africa, this excludes a large part of the population.

Change Management

Insurance organisations need to change people, systems and processes of how they approach the SSA market. Ultimately, there is work to be done to help move these insurance companies & distributors from providing an exclusive product to becoming an inclusive provider. FSDA’s project will involve supporting consultants to work within the selected insurance institutions for three years to help them manage the change from within. These consultants will work to deliver and develop services that are designed to help insurers expand their reach and become both profitable and highly scalable.

Partner Selection

Insurance is an important part of financial inclusion as it helps people to prosper and mitigate risk necessary to grow productive businesses. To ensure that capable and willing partners were found to drive this market-wide change of the insurance market, FSDA opened applications to insurance companies across the continent who are looking to change their target market to include the financially underserved. The application process was open from December 2015 to mid-January 2016 and attracted over 32 proposals from East, West, and Southern Africa. The number and quality of these applications show that the Sub-Saharan insurance industry is ready for a paradigm shift in their approach to microinsurance.

Mobile channels are boosting product access

Majority of applicants for the funding wanted to build on the rapidly growing mobile channel in all of their respective markets. The increasing presence and growth of the mobile channel has helped to boost inclusion of access to financial services.

Insurers are recognising the different needs of their markets. However, regional differences remain and reflect the level of development of the existing insurance market. For example, many proposals from West Africa, a much more nascent insurance market, focused on providing the simpler products, such as health or life insurance. By contrast, in East Africa, insurance was focused on complex products, such as weather-based index insurance or insurance for small and medium enterprises.

The insurance space in Africa is rapidly evolving and FSDA’s role will be to guide motivated and committed insurers to make the changes necessary to grow their footprint in the underserved market.

[1] The Landscape of Microinsurance Africa 2015 Preliminary Briefing Note by Microinsurance Network.

[2] Kenya Financial Diaries; August 2014

[3] Kenya Financial Diaries; August 2014