Impact Accelerator 2017

Building an Impact-Driven Investment Portfolio

CDC Group is the UK’s Development Finance Institution (DFI) and wholly owned by the UK Government. Founded in 1948, it is the world’s oldest DFI. Its mission is to support the building of businesses throughout Africa and South Asia, to create jobs and make a lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places.

The Impact Accelerator (IA) was created in 2015 to develop the market for impact investing in some of the most remote and challenging business environments in the world. Here CDC draws on its experiences of investing over the last two years and make recommendations on how to build an impact-focused portfolio.

CDC invest capital in highly developmental businesses that can achieve commercial sustainability in the medium term. The focus is on investments that either address underserved consumers, sectors or segments of the value chain, support scalable innovative business models, or operate in harder geographies. CDC’s mandate means they can invest in ventures with more challenging risk-return profiles than typically considered by commercial investors, while capitalising on CDC’s reputation as the oldest development finance institution and its experience and networks in Africa and South Asia.

This focus will over time, and in successful cases, pave the way for commercial investors to follow once the business has scale and traction,
catalysing both commercial sustainability and development impact.

The IA is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and managed by CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institution.

Learn more how does the Impact Accelerator model work, read the recommendation on how to build an impact-driven investment portfolio and discover some of the best practices at the link.