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Greetings Agents of Impact! In today’s Brief: Featured: Shaping the Algorithm An Indigenous investor’s ‘net impact’ lens on AI: Extractive by design, reciprocal …
An Indigenous investor's ‘net impact’ lens on AI: Extractive by design, reciprocal by choice. For investors seeking to assert human agency in the development of artificial intelligence, Sami Saad of Raven Outcomes suggests a simple test: net impact. “Technology exists to serve relationships between people, and between people and Mother Earth,” Saad writes in a guest post. “Communities decide which relationships are worth sustaining. Technology follows.” The Indigenous-led fund manager in Canada allows, for example, that AI could reduce costs and speed processes for documenting community projects in the language funders require. In that use case, Saad says, “more capital flows to community-led projects, funding economic and social development on community terms, and deepening community wellbeing for the generations ahead.” Conversely, “costs that fall on Mother Earth, on community, and on future generations are never evenly shared,” he writes. Like any investment or instrument, he argues, investors’ marginal contribution to harms must be weighed against their marginal contribution to benefits.
Acumen secures $90 million for resilient agriculture in Africa. The impact investment firm rolled out its first Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund in 2021, raising $58 million to support African farmers' climate and livelihood resilience. It's back in the market with a second fund and a fundraising goal of $120 million, according to an SEC filing. Acumen is three-quarters of the way to its goal, having secured $90 million from the multinational Green Climate Fund, the Financing for Agri-SMEs in Africa fund, or FASA, international development finance institutions FMO, Proparco, Swedfund and BIO, and an undisclosed family office. Green Climate Fund and FASA both invested as catalytic first-loss investors. The capital will be invested in businesses offering farmers financing for productive assets like solar-powered irrigation systems and processing equipment; supply chain optimization solutions; market connections; affordable protein; and agri-waste management.
In India’s venture capital market, proximity pays. India’s sheer size makes it one of the largest venture markets in the world, with more than 200,000 registered startups and about $60 billion in private capital invested each year, according to impact venture capital firm Beyond Capital Ventures. But networks are narrow and capital tends to flow through familiar pathways. “Capital has become abundant, but context and access remain scarce,” writes Beyond Capital Ventures’ Pooja Monga. Sharing her experience navigating the Indian market for an overseas investment firm, she recalls, “I often found myself in rooms where I was one of very few women. At the same time, I was meeting others who were interested in venture capital but didn’t know how to access what felt like a closed network.” Local insight is crucial, she argues. “India’s most investable decade will reward those who understand it, namely those with the proximity to read it correctly.”
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