Investing for Impact in Africa

Global Evolution was honored to co-host an event with RENEW Strategies this past week at our offices in New York City on the importance of impact investments in Africa. RENEW is an impact investment and advisory firm that manages and serves the Impact Angel Network, a global network of investors who seek to make both social impact and financial returns on their African investments.

Guests were invited to sunset cocktails and conversation with RENEW founders Matt and Laura Davis, who manage investment operations from RENEW’s largest office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Similar to RENEW, Global Evolution maintains a commitment to leaving a legacy of impact investing, which we believe assists in lifting developing nations out of poverty. 

Although RENEW and Global Evolution maintain similar investment goals of generating social and environmental impact alongside a financial return, Global Evolution approaches its impact investments through publicly traded sovereign fixed income portfolios while RENEW seeks to establish a sustainable angel investment market in developing countries through the launch of public-private partnerships.

At Global Evolution, we work with organizations such as the World Bank, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and the International Monetary Fund, and Global Evolution’s pioneering ESG-research has resulted in its board membership and chairmanship of PRI’s Advisory Committee on Credit Ratings (ACCR). We believe that the process of responsibly investing in government debt in Africa and other early stage emerging and frontier markets has an extraordinarily positive impact on poverty alleviation. Further, government investments are key to early stage industrial take off.

At early stages of development much of this investment is government sponsored and financed by their borrowing, and working with governments on getting the macro-policy mix right also assists in pulling down debt financing costs. These investments go toward large-scale infrastructure projects that increase human productivity, such as electricity and water, health care systems, and school systems.

Increasing human productivity has led to the historic rise in average living standards under industrial capitalism and the subsequent alleviation of absolute poverty in many countries. RENEW’s investments are a reflection of this development.

RENEW works with development organizations, development finance institutions, NGOs, governments and private investors to facilitate investments into promising businesses in developing countries in Africa. Angel investing (larger than microfinance, and smaller than venture capital) fills a critical financing gap in developing countries, and offers both knowledge and capital to local businesses. As part of the model, development organizations work with RENEW to create an investment facility that serves angel investors by providing all of the in-country services of a traditional fund management team. It also offers angel investors a rewarding and potentially profitable investment.

The goal of this event was to bring like-minded investors together who do not believe you need to choose between doing good and making money. Impact investments don’t carry the weight of that trade off, as the intention is to do both. 

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding Global Evolution or our views on impact investing in Emerging and Frontier Markets.