12 new teaching case studies on Innovative Finance in Africa

"Together, these cases explore and uncover the most pressing issues around implementing and assessing innovative financing strategies, including understanding the investment opportunity by impact sector, conducting due diligence and structuring investments, evaluating impact funds and fund managers, utilising innovative financing vehicles, and measuring impact," says Aunnie Patton, lead of the Innovative Finance initiative at the Bertha Centre.

The cases feature 18 social impact enterprises and 16 funds from 11 countries across the continent. The sectors covered include agriculture, access to housing, access to health, access to finance (or fintech), access to education, and water, sanitation and hygiene. In addition to debt and equity investment, the cases also profile innovative vehicles across Africa such as diaspora bonds, crowd funding, blended finance, microfinance, peer lending, social insurance products, quasi equity, trade credit for SMEs and more.

"The Centre is thrilled that these case studies are being released. Their contribution to entrepreneurial education cannot be underestimated, as up until now the majority of case studies have been about US-focused ventures. Business schools in general have been slow to respond adequately to the rapidly accelerating MBA student interest in emerging markets, particularly in the African region. In that regard, we view the publication of these case studies as a pioneering endeavour that will advance students' understanding of the particular context and challenges for ventures with social purpose in African countries and look forward to their wide dissemination," says Pamela Hartigan, director at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

Content of case studies

Content covered in the 12 teaching case studies include:

• Wendy Luhabe: social entrepreneur & impact investor
  
• Zoona mobile money: investing for impact
  
• A tale of two agricultural funds
  
• Investment vehicle innovations
  
• Impact investing fund manager profiles
  
• Investment theme cases (themes covered include access to: housing, health, finance, education, renewables and clean technology.)

Part of curriculum

The cases will form the underlying curriculum of the Impact Investing in Africa, Executive Education course being offered at the GSB from 29 February to 2 March 2016. They will also be taught on the GSB's MBA, EMBA, MCOMM in Development Finance, MPhil in Inclusive Innovation as well as on Oxford's Saïd School of Business's MBA and EMBA. Additionally, there has been interest in using the teaching cases in courses at other leading business schools such as Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, New York University's Stern School of Business, Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, Strathmore University and others.

Impact investors in Africa have the opportunity to use innovative financing tools to deploy capital that intentionally creates positive social, environmental and financial impact. These cases represent the largest body of work [focused on Africa] to date that explores this emerging investment industry, and gives readers the tools to develop their own strategies.

The teaching case studies can be downloaded here.