The African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA), has launched a landmark study report on the state of social investment financing in West Africa.
The report maps social investments in West Africa with a deep dive focus on Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, and a high-level assessment of Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. It is part of a series of three reports, where the other two focus on East and Southern Africa.
The chief executive officer, AVPA Dr. Frank Aswani, , says this study provides both insights into the current state of the social investment landscape in the region, and a baseline against which to track future progress and key trends that will influence the increased flow of capital into social investments in Africa.
Highlights include the demand and supply sides of social capital, the role of philanthropy especially in unlocking private capital, deal sizes and the key focus areas for social investors. The report also identifies gaps in social investing and recommends ways to bridge them.
AVPA, a unique Pan-African network for social investors, headquartered in Nairobi with offices in Johannesburg and Lagos, is committed to building a vibrant and high impact social investment community across Africa. It was launched in 2018 with a mission to drive a transformative social investing agenda on the continent by unlocking new capital for social impact in Africa. The AVPA network operates along the continuum of capital: grants, debt, equity, and is aligned with thriving sister networks in Europe (EVPA), South America (Latimpacto), and Asia (AVPN) to form a dynamic global force for social impact.
Africa needs the private sector to realize the Sustainable Development Goals, as it commands a vast amount of financial as well as non-financial resources. In particular, the continent needs the $250 trillion global private capital markets to bridge an estimated annual gap of between US$ 500 billion and US$ 1.2 trillion in SDG funding. So far, Senegal is the only country in the West Africa region that has achieved an SDG – sustainable consumption and production.
“Similar to what happened when Nigeria rebased the economy, we need to rethink how we define sources of capital to expand the social investments capital base by including currently peripheral, but huge in West Africa, sectors like diaspora remittances, private philanthropy, corporate social initiatives, faith-based organisations, and crowdfunding,” says Oluwatoyin Adegbite-Moore, the AVPA Executive Director for West Africa. “Formalizing structures and frameworks that support these sectors in partnership with governments to create structures and systems that support and advance financing to start-ups, social enterprises, and nonprofits, will go a long way in helping bridge the demand and supply sides of social investments in the region.”
This requires a good understanding of the social investment landscape, and necessitates collaboration amongst the local, international, public, and private social capital providers to deploy existing capital resources in new ways. AVPA is addressing this by building a knowledge base of social investors and investments in Africa while working collaboratively to identify innovative programmatic interventions for creating increased social investments, effective and innovative capital deployment and sustainable and scalable impact across the continent.
The mapping of the Landscape for Social Investment Study was undertaken over eight months, in partnership with Intellecap, the advisory arm of The Aavishkaar Group.