Small and Medium-sized Enterprises are set to benefit from Kshs 2.9 billion funding by Oxfam Novib in partnership with Goodwell Investments.
The funding targets enterprises in the country and its East African counterparts, Ethiopia and Uganda, with a main interest in women-led and owned firm.
The initiative echoes the government’s plan to promote small businesses toward growth through affordable funding.
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The fund seeks to support early-stage growth companies that are still struggling to secure finance from banks and investment funds to accelerate growth.
Tamara Campero, investment manager at Oxfam Novib, says the pact is part of their broader vision to achieve a fair, green and inclusive future.
The funding will mainly focus on sustainable agriculture, energy, clean mobility, logistics and waste management sectors.
This is on the backing that the sectors produce many of the basic goods and services that represent a huge proportion of household spending for lower-income communities.
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“In order to improve the quality and affordability of these essentials, ‘Pepea’ is targeting SMEs that drive the growth of a greener, fairer and more gender inclusive ‘human economy’ that serves the needs of society while respecting the planet,” Campero said.
She added that the fund has concrete impact targets to guide the investment strategy, including the expansion of the aforementioned female stakeholder’s involvement across the value chain and the creation of new jobs.
It also seeks to directly contribute to UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for climate action and gender equality. To enhance accountability and success of the credit, the partners have committed to gathering impact feedback from the target audience with a strategic board made up of representatives from SMEs, as well as their end users.
This is to ensure the fund managers take the voice of the community into account to improve impact performance and better identify unaddressed needs.
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