The Brief

The Brief: Investments in jobs, energy and healthcare for refugees displaced by conflict

ImpactAlpha · March 12, 2026

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

Impact-linked loans to incentivize investments in refugee communities
Justice tech to expunge criminal records
Closing the insurance protection gap
Lessons from climate finance for investors in responsible AI

Featured: Refugee-Lens Investing

Conflict in the Middle East creates (even more) refugees in need of livelihoods, services and impact investment. The missiles and bombs falling on Iran and Lebanon have set off a new humanitarian crisis in a world already struggling to support more than 122 million people displaced by violent conflict. “The number of refugees and forcibly displaced people is increasing, but there’s only short-term, emergency humanitarian funding,” laments Patrick Elmer of Zurich-based iGravity. “There’s a big gap in the market.” The impact advisory firm is among a growing number of organizations testing creative financing solutions for refugees and other displaced people. iGravity invests in businesses and technologies supporting refugee communities mainly in Uganda and Jordan, and is expanding to Colombia, which has an estimated three million Venezuelan refugees. Its Refugee Investment Facility, launched in 2022 with backing from the Danish Refugee Council, provides loans and incentives to encourage businesses to serve, train and hire refugees. “Refugees are often perceived as a burden. We’re trying to change the narrative,” says Elmer. “They can become employees, they can sell agricultural products and become suppliers, and they can become clients. We’re showing the opportunity and the economic case for inclusion.”

Shifting funding models. Major humanitarian NGOs including UNICEF, Save the Children and Mercy Corps are experimenting with investment models to stretch increasingly scarce global aid dollars for people affected by conflict and climate change. The International Rescue Committee this year launched Airbel Ventures to invest in new technologies like predictive analytics for food insecurity, and improved data collection on the ground (see, “New tools for humanitarian relief in crisis zones”). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees developed a climate resilience fund to support refugees facing climate-related shocks. UGAFODE in Uganda, home to the largest number of displaced people in Africa, provides collateral-free loans to women and refugees. UK-based RefuAid leverages donor funding and other types of capital to lend to refugees seeking new workforce skills.
Catalytic capital. iGravity’s pilot fund raised $8 million to provide low-cost loans to local businesses providing job opportunities or delivering essential goods and services like microcredit, clean energy and healthcare to displaced communities. The facility lends at below-market rates of 6% to 8%, with additional discounts for borrowers that expand services to refugees, increase their number of refugee borrowers, or hire and train more refugees. In Uganda, for example, iGravity made a $300,000 loan to Omia Agribusiness to encourage the company to offer affordable packages of farm inputs to refugee farmers, and to hire more refugees. Omia met these metrics within the first year. The next iteration of the Refugee Investment Facility is aiming for $25 million and will include risk-mitigation features to crowd in family offices and development finance institutions. “The ambition and the success of what we do can only be achieved through scale,” says Elmer. “What we are doing today is only a small drop in the ocean.”
Keep reading, “Conflict in the Middle East creates (even more) refugees in need of livelihoods, services and impact investment,” by Lucy Ngige.

Dealflow: Justice Tech

Rasa Legal raises $5 million to help people clear criminal records and access jobs. More than a third of working-age adults in the US have a criminal record, creating barriers to housing, education and employment, even when charges never led to a conviction. Expunging those records can be complex and expensive without access to legal services. Rasa is looking to scale an affordable model that has helped more than 26,000 individuals find out what’s on their record and determine their eligibility for clearance. Among those individuals, 5,000 cases have been expunged by Rasa’s lawyers since 2022. “Rasa sits at the intersection of education, workforce access and justice,” said Amy Nelson of Rethink Education, the lead investor in Rasa’s $5 million seed round. “By combining technology with legal expertise, the team is building scalable infrastructure that removes barriers to education, employment and opportunity.”

Decarceration and reentry. Rasa also connects users to education, health insurance and fair-chance hiring opportunities. With clean records, individuals are more likely to secure job interviews and higher wages. “We believe technology can dramatically expand access to justice and new opportunity,” said Noella Sudbury, a former public defender and founder of Rasa. With seed funding, the Utah-based company is looking to “scale our impact across America,” she said, starting in Arizona and Pennsylvania. The place-based Richard King Mellon Foundation invested to support Rasa’s work in Pittsburgh. Other backers include Social Finance and Halogen Ventures, which invests in women-led startups.
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Gangkhar raises $4.3 million for embedded insurance in Latin America. Washington, DC-based Gangkhar wants to bring insurance protection to underserved populations. The startup raised $4.3 million in seed funding to expand its embedded insurance products across Latin America. Impact investors Accion Ventures and EWA Capital participated, alongside fintech venture firm Anthemis and others. Gangkhar allows fintech firms, retailers and others to offer insurance directly to their customers, without routing users to a third-party insurer or a separate app. Delivery companies, for example, can include insurance coverage into every trip in a region where cargo and shipping theft rates are high. “Insurance plays a critical role in helping small businesses and individuals manage shocks,” Accion Ventures’ Sebastian Molina Gasman told ImpactAlpha. “Helping close the protection gap in the region is an important goal to ensure there is more financial stability in underserved populations.”

More.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

Netherlands-based Rabobank launched the Rabo Impact Foundation with €102 million ($118 million) to invest in food systems, energy, healthcare, water, circularity and affordable housing. (Rabobank)
Proparco loaned €5 million ($5.7 million) to Kosovo-based microfinance AFK to provide credit to women-led and rural businesses. (Proparco)
Unicorn India Ventures led a $3 million seed round for Verdant Impact, which provides AI-assisted crop and livestock management. (EnterpriseAI)
Zurich-based Emerald Technology Ventures raised €100 million ($116 million) from Temasek, Grundfos Foundation, SKion Water, Ecolab and others for its second global water fund. (Emerald Technology Ventures)
Ecuador-based Impaqto Capital invested in Colombia-based water treatment company Zhana Solutions to support its expansion into Mexico. (Impaqto Capital)

Impact Voices: Shaping the Algorithm

Responsible AI should be a top priority for impact investors. Climate investing offers lessons. The most consequential technology in a generation – artificial intelligence – is being built and deployed, but responsible investors are only now beginning to address it as a governance, risk and impact priority. To get a leg up, they can look to another systemic risk with complex techno-economic transitions and political and policy cross-currents: climate change. “From corporate engagement on fossil fuel production, to the development of climate-related financial disclosures and sector-specific materiality maps, investors are familiar with the tools, frameworks and approaches that worked for climate,” Daniel Firger of Great Circle Capital Advisors writes in a guest post. “AI needs all of that, and it needs it on a compressed timeline.”

Climate playbook. Firger shares insights from a white paper published by Great Circle and Omidyar Network, which polled climate experts and stakeholders for lessons for responsible investors tackling issues related to AI. That includes framing responsible AI investing in ways that appeal to both responsible investors and wider capital markets, and grounding arguments in financial materiality. Support from financial regulators and central banks can lend legitimacy. Unlike climate, there is no universally accepted metric, like greenhouse gas emissions, to anchor investor engagement in responsible AI. Investors, including Norges, Railpen and the VC network Reframe Venture are developing frameworks.
Good enough. Investors should engage companies and fund managers immediately on responsible AI practices, rather than waiting for the equivalent of an “AI TCFD,” says Firger, referring to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure that guided climate risk reporting. “If you manage capital with any intention of aligning it with impact, AI governance is now squarely within your fiduciary responsibility,” he says. “The infrastructure that will determine whether AI is deployed responsibly or recklessly is being built over the next four years. The investors who show up now will shape it.”
Keep reading, “Responsible AI should be a top priority for impact investors. Climate investing offers lessons,” by Great Circle Capital Advisors’ Daniel Firger.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Hela Fourati-Triki, formerly at BloomScale, joins Bpifrance as vice president of private equity, focusing on Africa… Zaki Raheem, previously at DAI Global, joins the the Miller Center for Global Impact as senior director of programs… David Schuppan and Phil Alphonse are named co-presidents of Vistria Group’s flagship funds, while Nick Potter is appointed head of strategic initiatives… Faiza Ali departs the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Partnership foundation to join Acumen as grant manager for the Green Rise Africa program… Kenneth Owera is promoted to chief investment officer at NSSF Uganda.

Verónica López de la Lama, formerly at Solidaridad Network, joins Amazonia Impact Ventures as impact and ESG lead… The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition has an opening for a financial inclusion-focused project coordinator… The Berkeley Research Group is hiring a senior associate for energy and climate… Britebound has an opening for an impact investing intern in Boston…. Cascade Climate is recruiting a carbon markets manager… The Aspen Institute seeks an operations and impact program associate… The Inter-American Development Bank has an opening for a public policy intern… Re:wild is on the hunt for a senior manager for its species fund.