2019 Spring Cohort
Add-Value is a fund management firm based in San José, Costa Rica. They aim to develop and deliver climate adaptation solutions aimed at increasing small farmers resilience to climate change, and at the same time improve their productivity, income generation capacity, and living conditions. They will work through a group of rural financial organization in seven Latin American countries with a combination of financial support and technical assistance.
Africa’s energy intensity is more than 40% higher than that of the world’s average. This will only increase as Africa builds its industrial capacity. Energy Efficiency (EE) measures can help African countries reduce their reliance on expensive and polluting power generation.
Camco aims to overcome the main challenges to energy efficiency in Africa. We will facilitate the execution of EE interventions primarily by supporting Energy Service Companies (ESCO) in the commercial and industrial space. The ESCOs will selectively upgrade the energy efficiency of customers with upgrading insulation, lighting, and industrial machinery such as compressed air systems, or implementing energy efficient processes amongst other things. Energy efficiency has the benefit of being cheap resource to exploit and has been known to generate high returns for ESCOs. As such, we expect the concept to be well received as the benefits can directly be traced onto a P&L.
Terra Global is a one-of-a-kind investment advisor, launched by two women partners with 50 years combined experience on Wall Street and in rural development, where they have worked in more than 28 countries establishing themselves as global leaders in developing sustainable agricultural, forestry and land-use emission reduction programs. They have a unique focus of supporting the production-end of smallholder agricultural value chains, to create substantial income growth through investing in smallholder groups that grow crops in and around forest areas, to increase yields and improve post-harvest processing that allows them to capture more of the value chain. Terra Global seeks to scale sustainable production of crops and forest management to reduce deforestation, while producing a second income stream of carbon credits that are sellable into the voluntary carbon market offering new income opportunities for the communities.
Spark+ Africa Fund is a partnership of 12 development finance institutions, foundations, family offices and pension funds to launch the world’s first impact investment fund focused on clean and modern cooking energy solutions in developing markets. With its first close in March 2022 at USD 40 million, and a targeted size of USD 70 million, the fund is investing debt and mezzanine capital in scalable growth-stage companies that manufacture, distribute, and finance life-improving biomass, biogas, ethanol, electric, and LPG-based cooking appliances and fuels to low-income consumers in sub-Saharan Africa. Clean and modern energy solutions for cooking have a range of individual and societal benefits including improved respiratory health, reduced time poverty for women and greater gender equality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation, industrial and economic development, and poverty reduction. The fund is managed by Switzerland-based impact investment advisor Enabling Qapital, supported by its technical assistance partner Stichting Modern Cooking, and was promoted by the United Nations Foundation’s Clean Cooking Alliance.
2019-1 Honorary Cohort Member
The aim of Dao Foods International is to help entrepreneurs introduce exciting new plant-based meat products in China to reduce the consumer demand for animal agriculture. China is the largest consumer market in the world with rapidly rising incomes and increasing meat consumption, which if left unaddressed will lead to growing negative environmental, food safety and health impact. In economic terms, there is not enough arable land in China to support the growing need for meat, so alternative sources of protein for the growing middle class will undoubtedly be a growth market. Dao Foods believes that supporting talented entrepreneurs who are targeting the 400m millennials in China with new, exciting, and delicious plant-based and clean meat products is a huge business opportunity with massive social impact.