To encourage employment opportunities, $200 M Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund launched
An initial $200 million has been pledged to the Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund (MFAGF), a fund of funds that works via African investment entities to promote early-stage, growth-oriented SMEs on the continent.
The Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund seeks to provide young people, especially young women, with access to respectable and worthwhile employment. The fund of funds is audacious and catalytic, aiding in the crowding in of capital for African entrepreneurs by bolstering and reducing the risks associated with African investment vehicles dedicated to achieving gender equity in entrepreneurship.
The MFAGF will provide its portfolio firms with a business development facility in addition to funding for investment vehicles. The program will apply gender lens investment principles to further the Young Africa Works goal of the Mastercard Foundation, which seeks to provide access to 30 million young people in Africa, particularly young women, to meaningful and respectable employment by 2030.
Two investment vehicles supporting entrepreneurial growth have already been recruited by the Fund-of-Funds, one in East Africa and one in West Africa.
“We need to do everything it takes now to build a continent with shared prosperity and sustainable, inclusive growth,” said Dr. Dorothy Nyambi, president and CEO of MEDA “This fund of funds will strengthen and empower a new crop of African investment vehicles to drive decent job creation for women and youth via investments in small and medium-sized enterprises”.
