Africa Jobs Fund to focus on export manufacturing and international labour mobility
Daniel Yu launches $100 million Africa Jobs Fund.
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Africa Jobs Fund (AJF) has launched with plans to mobilise $100 million in philanthropic capital to back companies it says can create high-productivity jobs and raise incomes across sub-Saharan Africa. The fund will be housed at Renaissance Philanthropy.
According to the fund’s promoters, export manufacturing and labour mobility are the two most reliable and proven routes out of poverty.
Export manufacturing: AJF said it will back early “pioneer” businesses in export manufacturing. It argues that first entrants into new export markets face high set-up costs, including training workers, building supply chains and finding buyers, and that philanthropic capital can help de-risk these efforts for later commercial investors.
International labour mobility: AJF also plans to invest in companies facilitating international labour mobility. It said low-income workers can face opaque recruitment processes, predatory fees and inadequate training, while employers in high-income countries struggle to find reliable recruiters and trained workers.
AJF is led by Daniel Yu, founder of Wasoko, one of Africa’s largest B2B e-commerce platforms, with a track record of having raised $145 million and serving more than 150,000 informal retailers.
Yu is joined by Ben Hyman as operating partner. Hyman founded Talent Safari, an African recruitment firm.
Senior advisors to AJF include Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of unicorn African tech firms Andela and Flutterwave, and Samantha Power, former head of USAID and former US Ambassador to the United Nations.
AJF launched as a fund of Renaissance Philanthropy, the non-profit founded by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg to design and run time-bound, thesis-driven philanthropic funds led by field experts.
Yu said, “Persistent poverty is at its core a jobs problem. Africa has hundreds of millions of working-age people reliant on subsistence agriculture or informal work that pays a few dollars a day. Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income. AJF exists to back the companies that create those jobs and opportunities. Nothing else in development comes close to the impact of getting this right, and that is why I am building AJF.”
Power commented, “In my time leading USAID, it became clear that helping people access better jobs, through international labour mobility and export manufacturing, is one of the most powerful tools we have to lift families out of poverty. The Africa Jobs Fund is pursuing this with tremendous rigor and ambition, and it is in our collective interest to do all we can to support and scale their investments.”
Aboyeji noted, “African founders have shown they can build category-defining companies. The next decade is about building the ones that put millions of people to work. AJF deserves the attention of every founder and funder serious about jobs and growth on the continent.”
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