The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is doing something unique. On a continental scale, it is bridging philanthropy and investment to produce a new development model called impact investing. Impact investing is the use of for-profit investment to address social and environmental challenges. The Foundation’s inaugural impact investment was made with Mtanga Farms Limited of Tanzania. The deal – which may become a model for replication in other countries – touches the everyday lives of hundreds of thousands of low-income people in rural Tanzania by improving farmers’ access to inputs, technology and markets.

The investment will help create infrastructure for farmers to bring their products to markets and contribute to the development of the Southern Tanzanian Highlands, one of the most promising underutilised areas of agriculture production in East Africa. The investment will also build a seed potato industry in the region, enabling increased yields and incomes for smallholder farmers through access to new seed potato varieties for the first time in three decades. The investment was made jointly with Heirs Holdings.

The motivations of the Foundation go beyond simply supporting profitable enterprises. We use African capital to create a pipeline of entrepreneurs, while supporting imaginative business leaders whose ideas advance social prosperity. We also seek to develop African innovation transfer, bringing advances from one part of the continent to solve problems in another.