![]() Coming out of the pandemic, infrastructure investment funds that primarily target renewables raised $2 billion, or 45% of the $4.4 billion raised by private capital funds in Africa. The pandemic reversed years of steady progress in reaching universal access to electricity and clean cooking. More than 40% were first-time fund managers, “pointing to a young and vibrant ecosystem,” writes Oryx’s Ewa Abel in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. The impact fund of funds Oryx Impact dug into the data of 200 funds measuring their progress around specific impact goals. ![]() Where fundraising was tough: local venture capital funds (which raised only $100 million), private debt funds and generalist funds. Funds targeting specific sectors like renewable energy, agribusiness, the food value chain and technology claimed 60% of all capital. Fundraising for Africa’s private capital funds jumped four-fold in 2021, after pandemic shutdowns meant funds could only raise $1.1 billion in 2020. AVCA’s private capital activity report rounds up the regional trends. It will take trillions, not billions, to achieve the SDGs, and that means more private capital, says the African Venture Capital Association, which is convening “Private capital in Africa at a crossroads,” this week in Dakar, Senegal. Overall, more than 600 African startups raised $5.2 billion in venture capital in 2021-as much as 2016-2020 combined – and impact investors were behind more than 40% of the deals. Impact investors have been behind the surge in funding for startups like Kenya’s Wasoko and Nigeria’s TradeDepot that are spurring the digitalization of informal businesses, which are overwhelmingly run by women. The good news: Much of the renewed surge of private capital flowing to the continent has an impact flavor, through investments in small business finance, renewable energy infrastructure and women. The bad news: The Covid-19 pandemic reversed progress in Africa toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Investing in AfricaĮnergy access and financial inclusion ride Africa’s swell of private capital. Perhaps the victory of Petro and Marquez in Colombia will make him turn green with envy. ![]() Lula has pledged to protect the Amazon, but like many on Latin America’s left has not made climate action a major part of his platform. Colombia’s Petro has invited da Silva to be part of a regional anti-oil bloc. That petro-state is holding its own elections in October, pitting authoritarian leader – and climate denier – Jair Bolsonaro against former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who currently has a comfortable lead. Australia and Colombia are not only major fossil fuel producers and exporters, they are among the most biodiverse nations in the world, along with Brazil. President Joe Biden’s methane reduction pledge, eschewed by Morrison, and bid to host the COP29 climate summit in 2024. The new prime minister has signaled he will join U.S. Albanese plans to boost the country’s renewable energy mix from 30% to 82% by 2030 and to build out the electric-vehicle charging infrastructure. Overnight, the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels became a climate champion. Australians last month gave the boot to climate laggard Scott Morrison, voting in as prime minister the Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese (and a slew of independent, eco-focused women). “We’re going to fight for the rights of our Mother Earth.” Colombia’s green turn may reverberate across Latin America and beyond. “This is the government of the people with calloused hands, the government of people who have to work,” said Marquez, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018 for her opposition to gold mining. The pair campaigned on a promise to lift up marginalized communities and wean the economy off fossil fuels (lost revenues would be offset in part by selling carbon credits). That is the platform that swept Gustavo Petro, a former guerilla and mayor of Bogotá, and his environmentalist-lawyer running mate Francia Marquez, to victory this week in Colombia’s presidential elections. If the rise of a Black former maid to vice president was once unthinkable in Colombia, so too was the idea that the oil- and coal- dependent nation would call a halt to new oil drilling and mining licenses and speed the transition to green energy. New Climate Leaders: Winning with a green agenda.
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