African Guarantee Fund join force with a crowdfunding platform in Frankfurt to make financing accessible to sustainable SME Projects in Africa
To improve funding of sustainable SME projects in Africa, the African Guarantee Fund (AGF), a market-friendly guarantee program that aims to make financing for small businesses easier in Africa, has teamed with bettervest, a crowdfunding platform based in Frankfurt.
The AGF, developed and supported by the AfDB in collaboration with the governments of Spain and Denmark, aims to offer financial guarantees to financial institutions in order to encourage financing of SMEs and unleash their potential to produce inclusive growth in the region.
Speaking on the new partnership, AGF Group CEO Jules Ngankam said, “Partnering with a crowdfunding platform and Fintech is in line with our strategy for the coming years and represents a unique development opportunity for innovative financing. Through our risk-sharing mechanism, the partnership with bettervest will have a positive impact on Africa’s green economic transition.”
“By cooperating with the African Guarantee Fund, we have come much closer to our goal of also letting our investors benefit from the valuable instrument of a default guarantee and thus perhaps directing more investments to the African continent. This partnership is a milestone for our company”, says Marilyn Heib, CEO of bettervest GmbH.
Through this relationship, we hope to further boost the appeal of impact investing, which benefits both the environment and humanity as a whole. Impact investing is not without dangers, just like any other sort of investment. The worst-case scenario in the event of a project failure is the loss of the invested sum. Risk of default will be reduced because to the partial guarantee offered by the African Guarantee Fund.
