The news:
- One Acre Fund, a Kenyan-based social enterprise supporting 1 million smallholder farmers in East Africa, has raised $1.4 million.
- The investment came from the 2018-founded Impact Bridge Asset Management, a Spanish fund manager specialising in social impact investing through its IB Impact Direct Debt, a $54.4 million (€50 million) fund. The fund is focused on financing social and environmental impact companies in developing countries.
- In May 2024, One Acre Fund received $10 million in funding from Proparco to enhance food security in Africa.
One Acre Fund was set up in Kenya in 2006 to provide smallholder farmers with basic interventions, such as access to naturally-produced hybrid seed and quality fertiliser, and training on farming best practices.
The goal was to significantly reduce poverty, provide food for their families and communities, improve their nutrition, and increase their incomes.
The social enterprise works with family farms in rural areas to help them build resilience for their communities and environment through climate-smart farming and programmes like the tree-planting initiative — a farmer-led movement that aims to plant 1 billion trees over the next 15 years.
According to the organisation, the farmers it works with can use mobile phones to repay loans, sign up for products and services, and access training, among other things.
As of 2023, One Acre Fund, which employs about 8,290 staff worldwide, claimed to have served 4.8 million farmers by 2023.
The social enterprise aims to serve 10 million farmers by 2030, which it claims is 10% of the families in the world living on less than $1 per person, per day. It currently serves over 1 million farmers across nine African countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia.
IB Impact Direct Debt fund, which just invested in One Acre Fund, has since secured $16.3 million (€15 million) from several international investors, including pension funds, and foundations.
About 80% of the fund would go towards investing in developing countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. In these regions, the fund aims to improve access to basic services, support climate change mitigation and adaptation, empower women, create more job opportunities, and drive financial inclusion.
