Our Impact Investing in Ghana report, the first in what we expect to become a continuing series, presents the findings of an intensive, 12-month research effort to construct a data-rich, three-dimensional, baseline understanding of Ghana’s impact investment and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Employing both rigorous quantitative and qualitative methodological tools, including interviews, industry consultations, and data analysis, it is the first phase of a two-phase fact-finding exercise. Phase 2, scheduled for release later in 2022, will gather additional information with the aim of driving transformational change through the creation of a live online map and a market-sizing project.
Part I of the full report, available in 2023, presents a comprehensive map of Ghana’s impact ecosystem to understand how it functions, who is doing what, how capital flows through it, and what kinds of initiatives and enterprises get funded or fail to get funded.
Part II presents a detailed discussion of what we have identified, in collaboration with seasoned industry experts, as the 10 most critical gaps in the ecosystem, their causes, consequences, and proposed solutions. The first five affect capital supply and demand:
Gap 1: Limited local financing vehicles and not enough local institutional investors
Gap 2: Insufficient catalytic funding and initiatives to increase the volume of investments and deliver long-term capital
Gap 3: A mismatch between demand for and supply of investment funds as a result of investible deals that are smaller and fewer than the capital funding available
Gap 4: The absence of a widely shared understanding of impact investing and an understanding that investments can, and should, be not only profitable but also beneficial to people and the planet
Gap 5: Low capacity of businesses especially in working with long-term capital providers, and weak capital-raising services
The last five are systemic-level gaps that affect the ecosystem as a whole and impede innovation, entrepreneurship, and collaboration among stakeholders:
Gap 6: Inconsistent or uneven quality in the enterprise support sector, gaps in available services, and inadequate data on results
Gap 7: Insufficient relevant data, research, and insights for the ecosystem, particularly on impact investing
Gap 8: Not enough collaboration among ecosystem participants to co-create, design and test solutions, products and services
Gap 9: Inadequate encouragement and pursuit of innovation, experimentation and change
Gap 10: A policy and regulatory environment that, despite significant improvements, does not sufficiently enable, facilitate and encourage impact investments
Part III of the Report discusses 8 levers of change that we believe have the greatest potential to accelerate or retard impact investment in Ghana, and which of them constitute the core levers, the Nucleus of Change:
- Level of Collaboration among Ecosystem Participants
- Adequacy of Leadership
- Level of Commitment to Ethics
- Presence of a Culture of Innovation
- Mindset Change
- High-quality Research
- Ecosystem-friendly Policy and Regulation
- Education and Capacity Building
