Campaign: Impact Report

FSD Africa Annual Impact Report 2024

The 2024 Development Impact Report by FSD Africa highlights the organisation’s progress in mobilising and allocating finance for Africa’s sustainable future. This report underscores the efforts of FSD Africa and FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi) in driving capital into under-served sectors, promoting innovative financing solutions, and addressing key challenges such as climate change, economic inclusivity, and gender equity.

In 2024, FSD Africa marked several milestones, including the issuance of sustainability bonds, deployment of de-risking instruments, and support for early-stage businesses. The report also emphasises the importance of partnerships with governments, financial institutions, and international organisations in strengthening Africa’s financial markets.

What to expect from the report:

Sustainability Bonds: Learn about FSD Africa’s role in supporting the issuance of over £491 million in sustainability bonds across multiple African countries.
De-risking Instruments: Discover how FSD Africa deploys de-risking instruments to attract more capital to Africa’s financial markets.
Nature-Based Solutions: Explore initiatives aimed at financing nature-based solutions to enhance Africa’s climate resilience.
Clean Energy Transition: Understand FSD Africa’s contributions to Africa’s transition to clean energy through strategic investments and partnerships.
Gender-Inclusive Financing: See how FSD Africa promotes gender equity by supporting women-led businesses and issuing gender bonds.
Early-Stage Business Support: Learn about the organisation’s role in strengthening early-stage businesses through capital allocation and technical assistance.
Clean Mobility: Find out about projects supporting clean mobility in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate Adaptation and Resilience: Explore FSD Africa’s investments in climate adaptation to support vulnerable communities.
Lessons and Insights: Engage with the lessons and insights gained from FSD Africa’s initiatives and consider how finance can work better for Africa’s future.

Impact Report: what we’ve learned and what we’ve achieved

FSD Africa was created in 2012 by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office with a mission to reduce poverty by strengthening Africa’s financial markets. This Impact Report, our first, charts our progress in fulfilling that mission.

It explains what we do, and how we do it. It highlights some of our most important work, demonstrating the impact we’ve had on the lives of millions of Africans. And it also outlines our plan for the future, as we look to new challenges.

Access to financial services

Between 2012 and early 2020, we reached millions of people and small businesses with financial services and products.

Access to capital

As of March 2020, we’ve helped to raise over £1 billion in capital to aid the growth of businesses and infrastructure.

Strengthening institutions

Since 2012, we’ve supported training for thousands of market actors, building the capacity of more than 50 companies providing vital financial services.

Success story: growing affordable housing with Sofala

Across sub-Saharan Africa, there’s an urgent need for affordable housing – not only to provide shelter and security, but to boost economic development.

To help tackle the issue, we invested in Sofala Capital, a housing finance business that provides funding and services for building projects, as well as mortgages.

Thanks to our help, Sofala has been able to attract new investors, increase its loan portfolios and extend its work in some of South Africa’s poorest neighbourhoods. And encouragingly, 48% of new borrowers with Sofala have been women.

To read more, and to take a look at other case studies, download our Impact Report.

Our next step: FSD 2.0

So far, we’ve focused on ‘finance for the poor’ – improving underlying market fundamentals in Africa to allow financial services to reach the people who need them most.

Now, as Covid-19 has demonstrated, we face new challenges. We need to redouble our efforts to ensure financial inclusion delivers tangible benefits – jobs, basic goods, green futures – with a direct impact on people’s day-to-day lives.

That’s why a £320 million package of UK aid has been announced, to support the next phase of financial sector development in Africa: FSD 2.0.

FSD Africa Impact Report – 2023

FSD Africa’s 2023 Development Impact Report discusses our progress against our sustainable finance strategy and is the second since we began implementing the strategy in April 2021. Other than progress, we also share the lessons we have been learning along the way on how to make finance work harder for Africa, both for current and for future generations.

In 2023, we celebrated two key milestones – the 10th anniversary of FSD Africa, and the coming of age of FSD Africa Investments. FSD Africa Investments turned six this year and has so far committed £92m pounds. Together, FSD Africa and FSDAi, have delivered value to over 12 million people and 3.2 million businesses, and have helped strengthen the financial markets in over 30 African countries.

While we celebrate several milestones, we are cognisant of the challenges that African countries continue to face in mobilising sufficient finance for climate and social development goals. That is why we are now placing a greater emphasis on new ways of mobilising finance for the continent’s sustainable development – through innovative climate finance solutions, leveraging Africa’s natural capital, and developing carbon markets. We emphasise the unique opportunities and resources that Africa has, and can bring to bear, in solving the climate and development challenge we all face.

What to expect from the report.

Learn about our work with regulators, policy makers and other market actors and how this is helping to catalyse the flow of finance into frontier investment opportunities on the continent.
Learn about the Africa Natural Capital Alliance, which we helped set up to mobilise the financial community’s response to nature loss in Africa and to help drive nature-positive investments on the continent.
Learn about the work we are doing with 4R Digital, Rabobank and others to grow and democratise access to Africa’s carbon markets. iv. Learn about our investment in Catalyst Fund, and how support provided to Sand to Green, an Africa based Agri start-up, is promoting sustainable food production in Northern Africa.
Learn about the Bima Lab Insurtech Accelerator, and the work we are doing with Soso Care in Nigeria, a low-cost health insurance provider that accepts recyclable waste as payment for insurance cover.
Learn about our emerging work on gender that is focused on giving women agency and financial resources that help advance the continent’s climate action, as well as solving for other needs.
Learn about the many other transactions we have supported to bring renewable energy, clean transport, and affordable green housing to those who need them most.
Lastly, engage with the lessons and insights we share from our experience, and let us know your thoughts on how we can make finance work better for Africa’s future.

FSD Africa Impact Report – 2022

FSD Africa is a specialist development agency working to make finance work for Africa’s future. Set up in 2012, we work on policy and regulatory reform, capacity strengthening and improving financial infrastructure, and addressing systemic challenges in financial markets to spark large-scale and long-term change.

Additionally, we provide risk capital by investing in cutting-edge ideas that we believe have the potential for significant impact. We take on projects that are more complex and riskier than those taken on by typical development finance firms, to unlock additional funding for innovative sectors.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen that investing in financial markets drives economic growth, boosts the income of vulnerable groups and helps to reduce poverty. Through our market-building initiatives, we have directly and indirectly crowded in around £1.9 billion in long-term capital, availing finance for SMEs, affordable housing and sustainable energy projects.

Our work has also enabled development of innovative products, increasing access to financial services for close to 12 million people in Africa. This improved access has been particularly beneficial during the Covid-19 crisis. Between 2020 and 2021, we saw an 87% increase in the use of remittance services to cushion families from the economic effects of the pandemic.

Our programmes have also supported business growth, increasing access to jobs for vulnerable groups such as women. To date, we have created or sustained approximately 67,200 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs, of which 12% were green jobs and 59% were occupied by women.

Results against five-year targets

The figure below shows our cumulative results against the five-year targets for each of our core indicators.