2007 Tutu Fellow Mezuo Nwuneli's Sahel Capital team has won the Impact Investment Award given by the Impact Investors Foundation at the Blending Finance for Social Investment Conference in Nigeria. The foundation says that the award honors and recognises a leading social enterprise and an investor within the Nigerian impact investing space who have made significant impact by providing solutions through their innovations, products, services or investments.
The award recognises entities who are able to set high standards through their business activities and investment decisions which further underscores the possibility of “doing good while doing well.”
The Impact Investors Foundation - IIF - is a nonprofit organization founded by a partnership comprising the Bank of Industry, African Capital Alliance, BusinessDay Media, and the Ford Foundation. The mission of the alliance is to reduce the barriers to impact investing in Nigeria to find solutions to the country’s major social and economic problems and opportunities. It says its approach to doing this includes convening critical actors in government, and the private and social sectors. It also seeks to promote innovative investment approaches and tools; build evidence on what works and what doesn’t, and provide leadership.
Under Mezuo's leadership, Sahel Capital put their experience in successfully backing agribusiness projects to bidding for and winning the management of the Nigerian government's private equity fund focused on food and agriculture, FAFIN. Sahel is now managing a total pool to $65.9 million through FAFIN’s portfolio of companies, which has impacted over 16,300 individuals through their engagement across the value chain. FAFIN portfolio companies aggregate a significant amount of crops from Nigerian farmers, including over 25,500 tons of rice, 13,000 tons of cassava, 364,000 litres of milk, 260,300 fowl and 24,000 tons of shea nuts a year.
You can read an extended profile on Mezuo and Sahel Capital and FAFIN here in AFLI News.
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