The path to growth in Brazil runs through the impact economy (videos)
Sign up for ImpactAlpha Latin America to follow the people and money powering Latin America and the Caribbean’s impact economy. In May, thousands of visitors …
ImpactAlpha Latin America: Investing in Brazil’s impact economy
Investing in life vs. tech: Lifting up nature-based solutions for ecosystems and communities
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Dealflow | Dennis Price
Mexico’s Savia Ventures backs Chilean alt-protein startup Done Properly (video)
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Dealflow | Jessica Pothering
New Global Innovation Lab cohort dives into regional climate finance solutions
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Dealflow | Roodgally Senatus
Evari raises $7.5 million to build more efficient heat pumps
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Dealflow | Jessica Pothering
Nsave secures $4 million to democratize Swiss offshore accounts
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Dealflow | Jessica Pothering
Optimo Loans secures $10 million to offer credit to rural India’s micro businesses
The Brief
Read by thousands of impact pros daily
Greetings Agents of Impact! The latest edition of ImpactAlpha Latin America, our newest specialized newsletter, drops later today. As a subscriber to ImpactAlpha, …
Today’s brief
Featured: Inclusive Economy
Path to growth in Brazil runs through the impact economy (videos). In May, thousands of visitors will descend on São Paulo for the Feira Preta festival, the largest Black culture and entrepreneurship event in Latin America. Founder Adriana Barbosa has, over two decades, grown Feira Preta, or "Black Fair," into a platform that has helped plug more than 10,000 Black and Indigenous creative entrepreneurs into the Brazilian economy. Barbosa’s Pretahub helps entrepreneurs produce and distribute their work through accelerators, physical spaces and financing. In turn, Barbosa, an Ashoka fellow, has helped companies recognize the purchasing power of Black consumers. Brazil’s Black community “is an economically active population,” Barbosa told ImpactAlpha at the Latin America Impact Investing Forum in Mexico last month (video). Investments in Brazil’s African descendants “would produce much more wealth,” she says.
Dealflow: Catalytic Capital
New Global Innovation Lab cohort dives into regional climate finance solutions. Climate Policy Institute’s decade-old Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance has mobilized $4 billion to urgent climate efforts in the Global South. To ensure local capital managers and other stakeholders have decision-making power over how money is deployed in their communities, CPI’s 10th and largest cohort is doubling-down on regional solutions. From the Lab’s East and Southern Africa program, ICLEI Africa's Resilient Municipal Market Fund is designed to bolster agri-food livelihoods and curb food waste in Africa. Grameen Foundation’s climate resilient agriculture bond is directed at women in Uganda. Forest Carbon’s Model Forests and Biodiversity Bond aims to tap corporate green bonds to support forest conservation in the Philippines. “We are expanding the Lab’s reach to address historically underfinanced and particularly vulnerable regions and thematic areas,” said CPI’s Barbara Buchner.
Impact Voices: Climate Finance
Investing in life vs. tech: Lifting up nature-based solutions for ecosystems and communities. Three recent ag-tech deals in Latin America left Laura Ortiz Montemayor uncomfortable. Marketed as impact investments, she saw them as serving big banks or corporate interests, selling more toxic agrochemicals and degenerating both biodiversity and smallholder farmers. “While agtech may offer efficiency gains, it often neglects the cultural and ecological dimensions of farming favoring corporate interests over the well-being of smallholder farmers and the environment,” Ortiz writes. “True impact lies in regenerative practices that restore ecosystems, promote biodiversity, and empower local communities.”
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
Verdane adds four new employees to its decarbonization team: Erich Becker, a former managing partner of Exergy Capital Management, joins as partner; Christina Levin-Rylander, previously with Northvolt, joins as chief operating officer of Verdane’s Elevate platform; Nikolaj Ager Hamann, previously with Seaborg Technologies, joins as senior decarbonization project director; and Ali Ersoz, a former visiting researcher at Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab, joins as principal.
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Investing in life vs. tech: Lifting up nature-based solutions for ecosystems and communities
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To scale the IRA’s “green bank,” community lenders should engage muni finance markets
When the University of Virginia issued the first Build America Bond ($250 million) in April of 2009, it was just about three months …
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Wealth-building and community ownership in the next stage of The Great Deployment
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ImpactAlpha, February 29 — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., impact investor. In King’s last public address before he was assassinated, he …
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Kachuwa Impact Fund scores $3.2 million to bring cooperatives to impact investing
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Can commercial corridors + broad ownership build community wealth without displacement?
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This sustainable investment firm is now governed by a perpetual purpose trust
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A to Z Impact backs Project Equity’s Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund
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Deal spotlight: Turning on the capital tap to finance water and sanitation in Africa
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Mad Capital raises $14 million in blended capital for regenerative farmland transitions
Mad Capital raised $10 million in 2021 for its debut Perennial Fund, which went on to finance two dozen farmers in the US …
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This proxy season, shareholders will have their say on AI, biodiversity and corporate political activity
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Bold leaders. Taking action. Driving impact.
Latin America | Dennis Price
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