The fund provides flexible financing to off-grid solar companies operating in African countries with the lowest electrification and energy access rates, including Somalia, Malawi, Benin and Lesotho.
Acumen reached its fundraising goal for the blended-finance initiative with $7.8 million from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC.
The capital will go into Hardest to Reach’s debt pool, called H2R Amplify, which has now raised a total of $180 million to provide impact-linked loans and receivables-based financing to cover companies’ working capital needs.
Acumen also secured $18 million in grant funding from existing backers to reward portfolio companies for reaching impact milestones (listen to our Agents of Impact podcast, “How Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz is blending capital to bring electricity to the hardest to reach”).
Impact incentives
The Swiss agency has been a long-standing supporter of impact-linked financing; it was the first backer of a type of impact bonus payment structure, called a social impact incentive, or SIINC, piloted in Mexico a decade ago (go deeper). H2R Amplify also has backing from the Green Climate Fund, Shinhan Bank, British International Investment, the Soros Economic Development Fund and others.
Hardest to Reach has a second funding pool, called H2R Catalyze, which offers a mix of debt, equity and grants to support companies’ market building work. Catalyze’s backers include the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, the Osprey Foundation, Cazenove Capital, and the Good Energies Foundation. Acumen launched Hardest to Reach at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023.
