June 1, 2017

London-based Victus Global Capital and Bermuda-based Altree Capital are joining forces to launch a US$50 million investment fund that will target investments in women-led African agribusinesses.

Led by the founders of Victus Global Capital – Bo Masole and Zee de Gersigny – and CEO of Altree Capital Jenni Chamberlain, and under an investment mission referred to as ‘gender lens investing’, the two firms are aiming to support African agriculture through funding women-owned agribusinesses. These are businesses that have demonstrated a history of hiring women, and agribusinesses that include the goal of improving the lives of women through their services or products.

Founded in 2012 by Masole, Victus Global Ltd is a food security consultancy that focuses on supporting and fostering the growth of primary producers and food manufacturers in Africa; helping to create global competitiveness and the ability for African producers to sell locally, regionally, and on the UK and European markets.

Altree Capital is a leading provider of asset management and advisory services to global institutional investors including the Africa Opportunities Fund. Risk-adjusted returns are generated for clients through the expertise of the firm’s professional team, bottom-up research, and in-depth due diligence.

Easing the access to capital for women-led agribusinesses in Africa is a key objective for the initiative, as it is often a major challenge faced by women in the sector, despite the fact that the sector is widely woman-dominated.

“In some countries, agriculture makes up 85 percent of employment. This is an industry that predominantly employs women, is run by women, but they don’t share the financial gain,” Masole told Global Trade Review. “There are a lot of networks that exist within finance that are really male-dominated,” added de Gersigny. “Not intentionally, but what ultimately happens is that men allocate money to other men.”

This is reflected in World Bank data which states that SMEs – one third of which are women-owned – account for 45 percent of employment and 33 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in emerging markets. De Gersigny goes on to note that 70 percent of these SMEs are underserved by institutional finance providers.

“The reasons are that women in many of these countries are less likely to own assets, they don’t have the same kind of network, they often don’t have the same knowledge or understanding of how to access finance,” de Gersigny explained.

The attraction of the fund goes beyond gender however, said de Gersigny, who explained that there are facets of the initiative that check off multiple boxes for investors.

“There’s a large movement into the impact investment space. Many of these investors are now looking to make investments into emerging markets, or frontier market,” said de Gersigny. “They really want to have a positive impact on the economy, to empower people to reduce poverty. If we are going to reduce these significant systemic issues one has to focus on empowering women.”

Details

The founders of the fund are aiming to make investments of between US$250,000 and US$10 million that will be targeted toward scaling up chosen ag companies and boosting intra-African trade activity.

“We see more opportunities to supply to African markets. Africa is a big net importer of food, so the opportunities in this sector are to produce for the African markets themselves, and then of course ultimately their opportunities for international export,” said Masole, reported Farming Portal.

So far Victus and Altree have created a pipeline of deals that include a meat processing plant in Malawi, a tomato processing plant in Zambia, and a coffee export operation in Ethiopia.

Investments will be directed toward the sub-Saharan region with a distinct focus on Ethiopia, Zambia, and Tanzania. This fund will exclude South Africa, however, Mosole, de Gersigny, and Chamberlain are planning for an expansion into the country at a future date.

“We would need a much bigger fund for South Africa,” said de Gersigny.. “Once we’ve got this fund fully invested, there is definitely an opportunity to raise a larger fund that would really focus on South Africa and much bigger projects.”

-Lynda Kiernan

Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.