Day 3: One Acre Fund and IFC

On Wednesday, we visited One Acre Fund's new office, which was spacious, stylish and start-up-y complete with bean bag chairs. The are recruiting pretty aggressively and grownig fast in several counties, with a goal of supporting 6% of the 239m under-nourished farm families in Africa.

One Acre Fund targets the very BoP, farm families that are unable to produce enough to both sell and nourish themselves by providing training, access to critical inputs through micro loans, and access to market pipelines for increased production and profits.

Though structured as a non-profit, others in the local social enterprise space have high regard for OAF, who manages to self-sustain 70% of expenses and deliver effective, efficient services while operating on business principles.

Learn more here: http://vimeo.com/75982352

Next, we went to the International Finance Corporation to meet with representatives who shared with us what the IFC is doing in East Africa in terms of providing solutions in private sector development.

They aim to:

- promote open and competitive markets in developing countries

- generate jobs and deliver essential services

- support gaps tn the private sector value chains

- catalyze and mobilize other sources of finance for privet sector development

They are prioritizing:

- frontier markets

- long-term client relationships

- local finance markets

- climate change

- growth constraints attributable to limitations in areas such as infrastructure, health, education, and most importantly, agriculture/food value chain ($1.1b in investments in 2013 in the ag. sector)

IFC invests in a variety of companies, including MFIs (such as FINCA) and agriculture micro-insurance firms (such as Kilimo Salama) and also has a PE fund to provide expansion capital to SMEs.

A fascinating day, concluding with a happy hour with the local social enterprise community!