A growing network of local fund managers and other intermediaries is also seeking to tap pension funds, bond markets and other homegrown capital networks to build a more durable source of financing.

Orchestrating some of the field-building is GSG Impact, which is teaming with local fund managers to engage policy makers and other ecosystem actors and pool capital from domestic institutional capital providers to support small businesses in Africa’s smaller markets. The effort in Senegal is part of a broader effort to expand impact investing into often-overlooked markets, including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia. GSG Impact has backing from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the initiative.

“It takes a whole ecosystem approach — involving investors, government, companies and civil society – to create the conditions for impact economies,” says GSG’s Impact’s Atieno Otonglo. “Bringing all the actors in a country’s impact ecosystem together helps align incentives to put positive impact at the core of investment, business, government and consumption decisions.”

Read the full article at ImpactAlpha: Seeding impact investing ecosystems in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire