TGIF, Agents of Impact!
- Roundup: Common goods
- Podcasts: Lyneir Richardson, Esther Ndeti and Joy Anderson
- Spotlight: Building a tilapia value chain in Africa
🗣 Common goods. This week I went from Austin, Texas, where robots were replacing bartenders at the giant South by Southwest tech conference, to a small gathering in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Helga Garza of Agri-Cultura described how the co-op’s 51 farms are building a local, sustainable food economy. The thread connecting the two events was sovereignty, and specifically sovereign wealth. At SXSW, “a quieter push emerged to center culture, design and human connection in shaping what comes next,” Dennis Price reported in our dispatch. The buzz at the Kellogg Foundation’s convening in Albuquerque was New Mexico’s new cachet as the first state to offer universal child care, a boon to families, employers and young learners. The no-cost care is provided not with tax revenues, but from a $10 billion endowment carved from its $72 billion State Investment Council.
New Mexico’s sovereign wealth, projected to grow to $100 billion by 2030, comes from oil and gas royalties unleashed by fracking (listen to my earlier podcast conversation with the SIC’s Bruce Brown). The conversion of such extraction into public goods (and renewable energy) could serve as a model for sharing the wealth, and cushioning the blow, as artificial intelligence transforms the economy. Like fossil fuel producers, the AI hyperscalers are extracting from the commons, this time in the form of knowledge and data, as well as energy and water. They could be induced by popular pressure and regulation to provide compensation via a fund for public goods, as Rutgers’ Joseph Blasi has suggested. That also would be a worthy design goal for Jeff Bezos as he raises a reported $100 billion fund to buy manufacturing companies and use AI to accelerate automation and job-cutting.
Such a predistribution of investment gains would seem more far-fetched if Agents of Impact were not already redesigning finance around broad ownership and shared prosperity. Just this week, ImpactAlpha’s Roodgally Senatus reported on ‘tenant equity’ models that are starting to give renters access to housing wealth. In a guest post, Julie Menter and Sean-Tamba Matthew suggested modest tweaks to “entrepreneurship through acquisition” search funds to deliver benefits for workers, too. WES’s Smitha Das made the case for investment in alternative ownership and governance models, such as perpetual purpose trusts. In our podcast conversation, Chicago TREND’s Lyneir Richardson explained how cutting neighborhood residents into commercial real estate investments creates value and builds wealth.
New ImpactAlpha contributing editor Antony Bugg-Levine started his first “Investing in America” column with the example of Ben Franklin’s revolving loan fund (his forthcoming book includes 80 more ways to expand opportunity with fair financing). Peter Buffett and other philanthropic investors are similarly paying it forward through Abundance Circle, a new catalytic fund of funds that will take first-loss positions in “consciously capitalist funds” targeting climate, food, health and community economic development, reported Erik Stein.
With a slate of Africa-based film productions, former State Department official Akunna Cook is reshaping both the continent’s narrative and the ownership of its creative projects, reported Lucy Ngige (see also, Dmitriy Ioselovich’s unofficial impact Oscars). In another narrative shift, some of the Middle East’s massive oil wealth was flowing toward green infrastructure and renewable energy, before the Iran war slowed the capital pipeline to a trickle, as Amy Cortese reported. Sovereign wealth belongs to all of us. Rather than blow it up, let’s deploy it for the common good. – David Bank
Also on ImpactAlpha this week:
- “Responsible investing creates value in private markets,” by Johannes Lenhard and Oliver Nixon
- “NYC is proving government can invest for the triple bottom line,” by Brinda Ganguly
- “A federal court ruled that Texas can’t tell you how to invest,” by Anayana White
The Week’s Podcasts
🦸🏾Agents of Impact. Chicago TREND’s Lyneir Richardson joins David Bank to share his “playbook to buy back the block.” TREND enables neighborhood residents to invest in TREND’s local shopping centers on the same terms negotiated by institutional investors, Richardson says. “Our model is: We’re going to make the neighborhood better, and the people that are invested are going to make a return.” Listen in. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
👩🏽🤝👩🏻Women Changing Finance. In a new episode, Esther Ndeti, managing partner at Unconventional Capital, tells host Krisztina Tora how she meets African entrepreneurs where they are, with revenue-based financing.
📯The Criterion Institute Podcast. Host Joy Anderson muses about the often-overlooked power of volunteerism and voluntary association as a foundational force in civic life, democracy, and systems change.
The Week’s Spotlight
Aqua-Spark aims to build an African value chain around ‘aquatic chicken.’ Five years ago, the founders of Aqua-Spark, the aquaculture-focused impact investing firm, laid out their investment strategy in Africa in a 90-page report on tilapia farming. Farmed tilapia “can and should play an important role in solving Africa’s challenge to produce sufficient food for its growing population,” they wrote. Founders Amy Novogratz and Mike Velings have now secured $48 million to anchor what they hope becomes a $250 million fund to invest in Africa’s farmed fish value-chain. “The sector is moving from, ‘This should work,’ to, ‘This is working – now it is time to help scale this up,’” Aqua-Spark’s Ben Gimson told ImpactAlpha. “We feel the opportunity in Africa is enormous.”
- Value chain. Netherlands-based Aqua-Spark has played an important role in building the investment case for more efficient, humane and sustainable fish farming to meet the protein and nutrition needs of a growing global population. For Africa, the fastest growing continent, that may mean tilapia, the hardy, fast-growing freshwater fish known as “aquatic chicken.” Aqua-Spark’s strategy for its open-ended fund is to nurture the tilapia value chain, from infrastructure, to farmer technologies and services, to inputs, to distribution, to export. “To really do it justice, we decided to set up a dedicated fund,” said Gimson. Aqua-Spark will blend its global experience with local partners and co-investors to link companies in Africa into broader markets and networks.
- Anchor LPs. The firm’s first investors for the fund include the EU’s Agriculture Financing Initiative, AgriFi, German development bank KfW, and the Livelihood Impact Fund. Gatsby Africa, the private foundation of the family behind UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s — and Gimson’s former employer — also invested. Aqua-Spark will write equity checks of $250,000 and to $5 million and provide technical assistance through its philanthropic arm. Two prior investments, Mozambique-based Chicoa Fish Farm and Madagascar-based Indian Ocean Trepang, have been transferred from Aqua-Spark’s global fund to the Africa fund, Gimson said.
- Keep reading and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.
The Week’s Talent and Jobs
💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.
Anup Jagwani, formerly with the International Finance Corp., was named World Bank Group’s farming and agribusiness director… Charlie Edwards, previously with Alteri Investors, became partner and co-head of the Bridges Fund Management Inclusive Growth Fund… Flourish Ventures promoted Efayomi Carr to investment partner.
Impact Capital Managers tapped Adam Habib Cisse, former fellow at Google, as programs and operations analyst… Bluefront Equity welcomed Jonas Stensrud Finholdt, previously with Deloitte, as investment controller… Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future appointed Theresa Finney Dumais, previously with Freddie Mac, as president and CEO… Lolitta Nunn, previously with Potlikker Capital, joined Impact Charitable as director of the Unlock Ownership Fund.
Bridges Fund Management brought on Charlie Edwards, formerly with Alteri Partners, as co-head of Bridges’ inclusive growth strategy… Allie Mullen, formerly with Antler, joined Planeteer Capital in New York as head of platform… Proparco appointed Edgar Martin as principal in its Delhi office… Circulate Capital promoted co-founder Wolfgang Hafenmayer to chief investment officer.
That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend.
– March 20, 2026
