The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), a global campaign with multilateral development banks and bilateral donors to mobilize financing for women’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, raised USD 5.3M in 2024, exceeding by a factor of five its goal for the year, and in the process reaching 400,000 women’s MSMEs worldwide. Also in 2024, the…(Read more)
Tag: impact investment
Ghana to Host 2025 Africa Impact Summit
Impact Investing Ghana (IIG) along with sister platforms in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, will host the 2025 Africa Impact Summit in Accra on June 11-12, 2025. The meeting will feature deal rooms to match investors and funds and companies seeking impact capital and a pre-conference study tour to Nigeria. For more information on the…(Read more)
Big Renewables Potential in Vietnam Needs Investment: New Report
A new report on renewable energy in Vietnam by researchers at Imperial College London and Singapore Management University found that “Given Vietnam’s strong resource potential, domestic and international investors have shown strong interest in various renewable energy projects, including solar, wind, and hydropower.” The Vietnamese government has instituted supportive policies to grow renewables, including feed-in…(Read more)
Global Energy Transition Investment Surpasses $2 Trillion
US-based Canary Media reports that, in 2024, global investment in the energy transition for the first time passed the $2 trillion mark. The main components of this aggregate number were $757 billion for electrified transportation, $728 billion for renewable energy projects, and $390 billion for power grids, based on Bloomberg data. To read the article,…(Read more)
Gender Lens Investing and Women’s Green Businesses
On November 11, 2024 in Dhaka, impact investment fund Truvalu and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation hosted a roundtable for bankers, impact investors and women entrepreneurs to explore ways and means of increasing access to capital for women-owned businesses addressing climate change through energy efficiency, clean energy, recycling or other green products and…(Read more)
Financial Solutions to the Marine Plastics Crisis in East Asia and the Pacific
A recent post by the International Finance Corporation highlighted an investment by Circulate Capital, a Singapore-based climate fund, in Union J Plus in Thailand, “a women-owned and led company that collects and recycles large volumes of domestic plastic waste in Thailand and converts it primarily into premium, food-grade polyolefin plastic”. The injection of capital “will…(Read more)
Just Transition Finance: Pathways for Banking and Insurance
At COP 28 in Dubai, the Finance Initiative of the United Nations Environment Program and the International Labour Organization released a new report entitled Just Transition Finance: Pathways for Banking and Finance. Among other things, this guide for financial institutions to: “Tailor products to support place-based just transition priorities and invigorate local economies; promote investments…(Read more)
Disrupting Trust Fund Madness
In this opinion piece, Ted Jackson argues that multilateral development banks incentivize their staff for continuous and relentless fundraising to fill the coffers of their ever-increasing number of trust funds. Instead, MDB staff should be rewarded for reducing poverty and making communities fairer, cleaner, and safer on the ground in the Global South. Access the…(Read more)
Plastics Circularity Investment Tracker Identifies $160B in Private Investments
In early November 2023, The Circulate Initiative, a US non-profit, published the key global findings of its Plastics Circularity Investment Tracker, an online tool for investors. For the period 2018-2023, the tracker identified 3,700 investment deals around the world and USD 160 B worth of investments in upstream and downstream products and services, including materials,…(Read more)
SWEEF Capital Publishes Practitioner’s Manual for its Gender ROI Assessment Tool
Singapore-based SWEEF Capital has published a Practitioner’s Manual to accompany its groundbreaking Gender ROI Assessment Tool. “Increasing numbers of organizations, government bodies, industry advocates and investors are engaging in frank conversations about barriers preventing women’s full participation in many activities, including access to capital and meaningful career pathways,” writes the gender-lens investment firm. “The new…(Read more)