ImpactAlpha LP / GP

African capital for African private equity

ImpactAlpha · March 11, 2025

Greetings, Agents of Impact! 

Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing, with a lens on the dynamic relationship between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

Will you be in Washington, DC, for Impact Capital Manager’s annual convening, or in Miami for SuperReturn North America? Drop us to note and let’s connect.

In this week’s newsletter:

  • African capital for African private equity
  • Sustainable investing with Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund
  • Billion-dollar impact funds

African GPs are trading out their LPs. Private equity, venture capital, private debt and infrastructure fund managers in Africa are diversifying their investor pools. On the decline: development finance institutions and even “catalytic” impact investors. On the upswing: African pension funds, insurance companies and corporate strategic investors. “No foreign investor. No external investor,” declares Samuel Yeboah of Mirepa Capital, about the close of its $8 million private equity fund in Ghana, which is taking stakes in export businesses, as well as education, healthcare and financial services companies. Mirepa raised its first fund entirely from local pension funds and other investors including Petra Trust Pensions, Secure Pension Trust, Fidelity Asset Management, Stanbic Investment Management and Venture Capital Trust Fund. “For us, that’s pretty significant,” Yeboah says. “It demonstrates that we actually can mobilize capital locally.” (See, “Samuel Yeboah: Helping Africans invest in Africa“).

  • Building the ecosystem. In Ghana, Uganda, South Africa and other countries, pension fund schemes see an opportunity to replenish their memberships with the employees of businesses that their investments help to succeed and grow. The Bank of Zambia is setting up a $200 million facility to backstop lending to small businesses. The arrival of the new LPs comes none too soon. “Cuts in development assistance from Europe, from the United States, to Africa and elsewhere has meant that we need to accelerate the utilization of local resources,” Nicholas Colloff of Switzerland-based Argidius Foundation said on the sidelines of this month’s gathering of the Collaborative for Frontier Finance in Kenya. “We need to build on that, and build on it quickly.”
  • Alternative assets. Collectively, African pension funds manage about $2 trillion in assets. Yet they invest a mere 3% of their portfolios in infrastructure and alternative assets, instead favoring listed equities and bonds. Mirepa is the second investment firm in Ghana to raise a fund almost entirely from local institutional investors. In 2023, Injaro Investments raised a venture capital fund of more than 200 million Ghanaian cedis (about $13 million today), anchored by pension funds and other local investors. Adenia Capital’s $470 million fifth fund, which invests in African businesses delivering essential goods and services, raised roughly $50 million from South Africa’s Public Investment Corp. and pension funds from Kenya and Ghana. Before the recent freezes and policy reversals, USAID Invest, a program of the US Agency for International Development, mobilized over $774 million from institutional investors for high-impact projects in Africa, with $556 million, or 72% of the total capital mobilized, from domestic sources.
  • Win-win-win. Many institutional investors have had few to no allocations in private equity and venture capital, and little understanding of the opportunities and risks of investing in managers like Mirepa that focus on local small businesses. Mirepa and other fund managers in Ghana banded together to launch the Ghana Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. Ghana also formed a national advisory board for impact investing affiliated with GSG Impact. Ghana’s NAB has been working on a fund of funds, anchored by domestic investors, to mobilize capital for local fund managers. A key driver for pension fund investments is the urgency of replenishing their membership ranks and fund contributions. “If you guys are doing these investments, make sure that your companies are actually contributing to our schemes,” one pension executive told Yeboah. Of course, the pensions stand to reap returns on their local fund investments as well, Yeboah says. “So, it’s a win-win-win scenario.”
  • Keep reading, “African GPs are trading out their LPs,” by David Bank and Jessica Pothering on ImpactAlpha. 

Dealflow: Energy Transition

Quinbrook plans $2.2 billion investment in long-duration battery storage in Australia. Australia’s year-round sunshine provides an ample supply of low-cost, renewable power. Needed: Longer-duration batteries. Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global investment management firm with offices in Australia, the UK and US, teamed up with Chinese battery manufacturer CATL to develop what it believes to be “the world’s first genuine eight-hour battery.” Quinbrook plans to invest A$3.5 billion (US$2.2 billion) to install three gigawatts of its long-duration battery system, called EnerQB, in Queensland, New South Wales and other areas of Australia. Quinbrook has exclusive rights to the new battery for three years to help commercial and industrial customers in Australia shift more load to solar power, which is already the cheapest form of energy in much of the country. 

  • Energy transition. Quinbrook manages a global portfolio of long-duration energy storage systems. The eight-hour battery developed with CATL, “brings us one step closer to the holy grail of 24/7 renewable power here in Australia,” Quinbrook’s David Scaysbrook said, “which is the ‘dam busting’ moment for this country’s decarbonization.” Scaysbrook sees long-duration storage, coupled with solar, wind and other renewable power sources, as the future of sustainable and low-carbon power in Australia. The country is home to some of the world’s largest battery storage projects, including the Hornsdale Power Reserve, backed by South Australia’s government. “Projects in high year-round solar locations can already produce power for up to 14 hours a day,” Quinbrook says. “Doubling the storage duration improves cost competitiveness to a significant degree.”

Ares Management forms sustainable investing partnership with Indonesia Investment Authority. The Los Angeles-based investment firm has committed to deploying up to $500 million annually in Indonesia via innovative financing mechanisms, including hybrid capital structures and securitization. The partnership with the Indonesia Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, will focus on projects that can leverage both Ares and INA’s expertise to drive impact in Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia. “This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to deploying capital effectively and creating innovative and sustainable solutions for Indonesia’s financial ecosystem,” said INA’s Ridha Wirakusumah. 

  • Innovative finance. Ares’ Edwin Wong said the firm, a $349 billion investor, has been investing in Indonesia for over two decades. Through its Asia Credit division, the firm manages $11.5 billion of assets in the Asia Pacific. “Alongside INA, we look forward to leveraging our experience in private credit and securitization, bringing more innovative financing solutions to the Indonesian market that can help support sustainable economic growth,” he said.
  • Check it out.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Swiss global investor Partners Group will invest up to $756 million to build up Australia’s GreenSquareDC as a large-scale developer and operator of sustainable data centers, following its acquisition of the company. (Partners Group)
  • Toronto-based Manulife Investment Management will integrate shared ownership into its investment approach now that it has joined Ownership Works, a private equity coalition aiming to create $20 billion in wealth for workers through employee ownership. (Manulife IM)
  • Beams Fintech Fund, BNP Paribas and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group backed a $70 million round for InsuranceDheko, which is working to expand insurance access in India. (Fintech Global)

Signals: Impact GPs

On this year’s IA50, impact funds are reaching institutional scale. The billion-dollar impact funds keep coming. Of the 165 managers on ImpactAssets’s latest IA50 list, at least two dozen have $1 billion or more in assets under management. That’s up by more than 30% from two years ago. Another 11 managed assets of between $500 million and a billion. It wasn’t that all long ago that $100 million impact funds were something to celebrate. The growing number of institutional-scale impact funds “signals the maturation of the space and the continued adoption of impact investing,” says Margret Trilli of ImpactAssets, which has curated the annual list for 14 years. Other trends: an uptick in funds focused on climate and infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and health and wellness, particularly mental health, she says. ImpactAssets’ own portfolio has grown to more than $3 billion across 1,200 investments.

  • Impact newbies. The IA50 contains a core list of 50 impact funds, as well as one for emerging impact managers (65 managers), and one for “emeritus” funds (50). Some 36 new fund managers made the list this year. Oweesta, a 25-year old Native CDFI intermediary; healthcare-focused Vistria Group, and sustainable infrastructure financier Spring Lane Capital are among 11 additions to the core IA50. The emerging impact manager lists showcases new strategies that have not yet hit the mainstream. Mad Capital helps farmers transition to regenerative agriculture; Second Horizon Capital partners with municipalities and communities to revitalize languishing real estate assets; women-led Beyond Capital Ventures invests in early and growth-stage companies in Africa and India.
  • Scaling impact. As impact funds grow in size, “GP stakes” strategies are helping them reach the next level, notes Jed Emerson, a senior fellow with ImpactAssets. “The ability for Capricorn or other folks to actually take these groups up to the next level through GP staking strategies” shows that impact can scale with integrity, he said (see, “Capricorn stakes out the next wave of large-scale impact fund managers”). About a quarter of the core IA 50 managers, as well as the emeritus managers, have impact reports verified by third-party assessors. While ESG investment has been under attack, impact investing “hasn’t missed a beat,” says Trilli. “It’s where the real impact happens.”
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Short signals 

  • PE ditches DEI. Large alternative asset managers are the latest to backtrack on DEI commitments, at least in name. Firms including Carlyle, Blue Owl, Ares, TPG, KKR and Apollo removed some DEI references from their 10-Ks in 2024, with some citing Trump’s executive orders on DEI as a risk factor. (Pitchbook).
  • Pension boost. Private equity generated an 8.9% return for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System in 2024, contributing to its overall 7.7% return. PE represents just over 15% of the pension fund’s $350 billion portfolio. (PE-Insights)  

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has dispatched a pair of private equity professionals to examine Social Security, Bloomberg reports. The individuals are Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who served on the board of Tesla and was an early investor in SpaceX, and Scott Coulter, formerly of Lone Pine Capital.

Marla Blow is named CEO of the Skoll Foundation, succeeding Don Gips… Julia Wilkinson, a former partner at Social Venture Partners, becomes managing partner of Lebec, a woman-led innovative finance and philanthropy advisory firm… Roc USA adds Fernando Rivera as sustainability manager of construction and development.

NESsT is hiring a chief financial officer… The Luminos Fund is hiring a director of impact… GAWA Capital is seeking a senior investment officer in Madrid and a regional manager for Latin America… Finance in Motion seeks an investment officer or manager in renewables and an investment management analyst… Opportunity Finance Network is looking for a senior vice president of innovation programs.

Community Capital Management is hosting “Advancing gender lens investing,” Tuesday, March 18… The Predistribution Initiative and Tufts University’s Fletcher School are hosting two sessions on “Asset allocation and financial benchmarking in an era of systemic risk,” on Tuesday, March 25 and Thursday, March 27… The Real is hosting “The Real summit: The intersection of finance and mental health,” June 3-4 in London.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– March 11, 2025