FSD Africa Investments (FSDAi) was set up in 2017 as the investment arm of FSD Africa, to deploy innovative, catalytic capital. Significant additional funding was provided in 2019. Since its
inception, FSDAi’s strategy has been to contribute to the development of the financial markets in Africa by playing a patient and catalytic role, using three investment approaches: test, accelerate
and mobilise finance as illustrated below:

FSDAi provides capital to meet the needs of the investee through a range of financial instruments, including equity, loans and guarantees. It leverages other teams at FSD Africa, who compliment the investments with market building technical assistance. We look for financial returns on investments that support the development of market-based solutions. Our key mandate is to accept higher risk and earlier stage than others, on projects with a high potential for development impact through testing new models, accelerating promising models in the market, and mobilising co-investment.

FSDAi’s work is complementary to the work of the rest of FSD Africa, and in our first phase (2017-2023) we have seen that this combination of financial tools from FSDAi and non-financial tools from FSD Africa yield impactful interventions.

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