Blended finance

The Transform Health Fund aims to provide a template for blended finance in Africa’s healthcare sector. Following the fund’s close, we talk about progress so far with Martin Edlund of the Health Finance Coalition, one of the fund’s founding organisations. 

The organisations launched a set of recommendations to boost impact investing in the European Parliament this week, calling for closer collaboration between public, private and philanthropic actors to maximise impact.

The Business Investment Financing Track has been set up to accelerate financial support for smallholder farmers and MSMEs in the agri-food sector, and improve food security and agricultural development in low-income countries.

The state investment fund Invest-NL, alongside pension funds and other investment funds, wants to explore the possibility of setting up a fund of funds, which could reach a size of between €600m to €1bn in the not too distant future.

The Venturesome Impact Fund will remain continuously open for applications, providing affordable funding to social purpose organisations in the UK.

Acquiring accurate impact data to support impact investments does not have to mean swamping the often-limited resources of intermediary and beneficiary organisations with complex data requests, according to Oxford University researchers.

The funding aims to target carbon reduction across Asia, with a focus on Vietnam and India’s energy transition, looking at areas such as renewable energy, electric mobility and energy efficiency.

A report from the UK’s long-term saving industry draws up an action plan to generate more private investment in support of public infrastructure spending from the UK’s new National Wealth Fund and other sources. 

The Dutch development bank FMO and Austrian DFI Oesterreichische Entwicklungsbank have invested $20m into the Regional MSME Investment Fund for sub-Saharan Africa.

The German investor believes offering financial incentives to companies if they hit social impact targets should play a greater role in investment strategies.