Agri-Business Capital Fund in West African deal
The Agri-Business Capital Fund (ABC Fund) has invested $1.8 million in the Union Nationale des Caisses Rurales d’Epargne et de Prêt (UNACREP), a microfinance institution in Benin, West Africa.
UNACREP provides short- and long-term loans and microcredits to its members, collects deposits and savings from its members and clients and trains and builds capacity of its members. Over the past two decades, it has built a network of over 130,000 members. It is headquartered in Porto Novo, the administrative capital city of Benin, and has 65 branches and outlets spread around the country.
The ABC Fund is providing a credit facility to UNACREP which will use the proceeds to further scale its agriculture portfolio. The investment will enable UNACREP to reach underserved smallholder farmers and cooperatives in the country, a critical segment of the economy, which makes up 70% of employment and contributes nearly 30% of the GDP. The investment will be directed towards rural Benin, especially in the north of the country where UNACREP is setting up two offices to cater for the needs of cotton growers.
The ABC Fund is a blended-finance impact fund which provides catalytic financing to underserved yet profitable segments of agribusiness value chains in developing countries. The fund has already supported farmers co-operatives in Côte d’Ivoire, agri-businesses in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, and financial institutions operating in Kenya, Uganda, Ecuador and Bolivia, which on-lend to smallholder farmers and agri SMEs.
Jean-Philippe de Schrevel, founder and managing partner of Bamboo Capital Partners commented, “This is a milestone moment as the ABC Fund continues the strategy of injecting much needed capital into the agricultural ecosystem in developing countries. We are particularly pleased to provide this credit facility to UNACREP, which will enable them to achieve a significant impact through improving the lives of smallholder farmers in Benin.”
Laurent Tolomé, chief executive officer at UNACREP commented, “ABC Fund’s financing reinforces UNACREP’s expertise in agricultural financing. This financial injection not only boosts its capacity to meet the real needs of smallholder farmers, small producers and cooperatives, but also accelerates the establishment of two new branches in the cotton-growing regions of Borgou and Alibori, where it is not yet present. Thus, this ABC Fund investment will be mainly directed towards these regions of the North-East of the Republic of Benin.”
The ABC Fund was initiated by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in partnership with, and is currently funded by investments from, the European Union, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), the Luxembourg Government and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and IFAD. The IFAD investment was made possible thanks to financial support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The fund is managed by Bamboo Capital Partners in partnership with Injaro as investment advisors. Its technical assistance facility is led by Agriterra, in partnership with Advance Consulting, AgriCord and Rabo Partnerships.
This transaction of the ABC Fund was facilitated by the advisor Fragg Investment.
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