AVPA and Investor Flow to promote impact investments in Africa

Pan-African network for social investors, African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA) and Investor Flow announced a strategic partnership to further promote impact investing across Africa.

With the highest potential impact investment globally, Africa is poised for strong economic growth but these opportunities require innovative and capital investments that address social needs with financial returns in specific instances.

The partnership between these two social investors network will provide a platform to connect investors to work together on a list of vetted and investable deals.

Dr. Frank Aswani, the CEO of AVPA said, "this is an exciting partnership that will allow AVPA to add another 500 plus investors onto the AVPA Deal Share Platform and most importantly into the African social investment community. It will enable greater co-investment and flow of financial, human, and intellectual capital into African social investments"

The partnership opens up the two organizations’ members to deals beyond their geographical locations, North America for the AVPA members and Africa’s growing social investment landscape for investorflow.org members.

It will also strengthen the two networks while increasing the flow of capital deployed to address many of Africa’s most pressing social challenges.

The current reality sees development aid decreasing and government funding shrinking while the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) financing gap continues to widen. This new landscape requires diversifying capital sources for social investments beyond grants, and embracing private players and capital markets as a burgeoning source of social financing.

According to a statement made available to benjamindada.com, "AVPA will continue to seek strategic partnerships of this nature to grow its community of investors and pipeline of deals with a view to promoting investment collaboration".

Meanwhile, Matt Eldridge, co-founder of Investor Flow said "Africa represents the second most preferred geography for their impact investments".

Matt said, "for the more than 500 investors on our global network, By working closely with AVPA, we look forward to making it easier for our investors and theirs to learn about and co-invest in impactful opportunities across the African continent."

AVPA and Investor Flow firmly believe that their partnership will lead to increased investor collaboration and the mobilization of capital that can help grow and scale social investments across Africa.

What is Impact Investment?

Impact investment is an umbrella term that brings together diverse categories of funders who are united by their intent to achieve social and/or environmental impact.

Broadly, impact investments include financial and non-financial support deployed via venture philanthropy, impact investment (with a focus on investing for impact) and socially responsible investing by corporates.

Photo Credit: African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA)'s website