ILF ESA Featured in AVPA Report on Innovative Finance in Africa

The Impact-Linked Fund for Eastern and Southern Africa (ILF ESA), managed by iGravity, has been featured in the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance’s (AVPA) latest report highlighting innovative impact investment approaches across the continent. 

The feature highlights ILF ESA’s work in advancing impact-linked finance models that connect enterprise financing directly to measurable social and environmental outcomes. 

About the Report 

The AVPA report explores innovative financing approaches helping address financing gaps across Africa while supporting businesses generating measurable impact. 

The publication brings together case studies and perspectives from organisations working across sectors such as climate resilience, healthcare, agriculture, financial inclusion, and enterprise development, with a focus on how financing structures can better align capital with development outcomes. 

What the Feature Highlights 

The ILF ESA feature focuses on how impact-linked finance mechanisms can support high-impact SMEs across Eastern and Southern Africa by incentivising independently verified impact performance, while also enabling enterprises to strengthen their operations, scale sustainably, and grow their businesses. 

Through instruments such as Impact-Linked Loans (ILLs) and Social Impact Incentives (SIINCs), enterprises are rewarded for achieving pre-defined social and environmental outcomes, based on a simple principle: the better the impact, the cheaper the capital. 

The feature also highlights several enterprises supported through ILF ESA, including: 

• Access Afya in Kenya, expanding access to affordable healthcare; 

• Shamba Pride, supporting climate-smart agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions; 

• Upendo Honey in Tanzania, promoting sustainable beekeeping and forest preservation; and 

• Guavay, supporting regenerative agriculture and soil health for smallholder farmers. 

In addition, the report explores ILF ESA’s approach to co-creating enterprise-specific impact KPIs, Technical Assistance, and embedding independent verification into financing structures. 

What This Means 

The feature reflects growing interest in financing approaches that move beyond traditional investment models by embedding measurable impact directly into financial structures. 

For ILF ESA, it represents recognition of the role impact-linked finance can play in helping enterprises scale while strengthening accountability around social and environmental outcomes. 

More broadly, it also highlights the growing momentum around outcome-based financing approaches across Africa and other emerging markets.   

Looking ahead, climate is an increasingly central focus for ILF ESA. As the fund scales across Eastern and Southern Africa, iGravity is deepening its work with enterprises contributing to climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience,  from renewable energy and agroforestry to climate-smart agriculture and circular economy models. By linking financial incentives directly to verified climate outcomes, ILF ESA aims to demonstrate that impact-linked finance can be a practical and scalable tool for channelling catalytic capital to the frontline of the climate challenge. 

ILF ESA is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Fourfold Foundation, Swiss Re Foundation, Medicor Foundation, and Leopold Bachmann Foundation. 

Read the report here.