Calvert Foundation is targeting to invest $50m across 10-15 investments in the next 18-24 months across different sectors in Africa, according to Jenn Pryce, President and CEO.

“Calvert Foundation has been lending in Africa across different sectors such as financial inclusion, renewable energy, health and education for over 20 years. Over the next 5 years we see tremendous opportunity in increasing our investments across the African continent, primarily in regions that are currently challenged by lack of capital for growth and development,” she said. 

“Our focus is to create an efficient capital continuum for organizations operating in various impact sectors in Africa so that they can sustainable scale their operations and impact,” Pryce told Africa Global Funds.

Calvert Foundation has recently announced a new business line, Capital Aggregation, which pools capital from multiple institutional and accredited investors, in the form of syndications and participations in fixed income transactions, to enable investment at scale in mission-driven organizations.

Calvert Foundation will originate and structure each Capital Aggregation transaction and act as administrative agent, leveraging its unique reputation as a trusted partner to investors and mission-driven organizations alike. 

The Foundation will target deals in the range of $10m-$50m and expects to participate in every transaction, ensuring an alignment of interest with investors.

"As both impact investors and impact markets have matured, we see a need for the facilitation of larger, broader flows of capital that can supplement our own investment appetite and are aligned with our investment objectives,” said Pryce.

“Our Capital Aggregation business essentially creates a one-stop solution by structuring and administering investable transactions for mission-driven organizations that ease the associated capital raising process by connecting them with a syndicate of investors who seek exposure to high-quality, risk-appropriate deals that generate social, environmental and financial returns,” she added.

During Calvert Foundation's 22-year history, it has raised more than $1.4bn from 18,000 investors and returned 100% of principal and interest. 

Investor dollars finance community development, education, environmental sustainability, financial inclusion, health, housing, sustainable agriculture, small businesses and renewable energy.

Pryce said: “We see an enormous amount of appetite for investments in Africa from a variety of investors, from development finance Institutions, to family offices and retail investors – each of them focusing on various aspects of the capital continuum and the impact spectrum.”

“We see this as a tremendous opportunity for Calvert Foundation to lead the charge on capital aggregation and deployment to meet the demand needs of the sectors,” she said.

“[In Africa], we see tremendous opportunity in the renewable energy sector, primarily in the off-grid space. Having been a pioneer lender in the sector, we have fine tuned our investment approach to channel capital at scale in order to move organizations from the pilot stage to the scalable one. We also see opportunity in the financial inclusion sector, from microfinance to local bond financing in order to boost African economies,” said Pryce. 

“In terms of regions and countries, we believe there is tremendous opportunity in increasing investment in local currency through creative hedging mechanisms in West Africa. That said we continue to see appetite for investments in East and South Africa, especially in the sectors we focus in,” she added.