SIBs, part of the new model for South Africa?
East Africa: Impact Investors Are the New Samaritans
allAfrica
It is now widely accepted by development practitioners that private enterprise and philanthropic organisations can complement government resources in solving social and environmental problems.
This has led to a growing number of international investors wanting to fulfil the desire for profit while also doing good in the community. Impact investors, as these entrepreneurs are known, seek to invest in a socially sustainable way.
A recent study on impact investment in East Africa, conducted by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) and Open Capital Advisors puts development finance institutions such as the African Development Bank and Preferential Trade Area Bank (PTA Bank) at the forefront of organisations making a coin while giving back to the surrounding society through knowledge transfer, environmental conservation and empowering people to find local solutions to perennial problems like drought and inaccessible outposts.
That they teach people how to fend for themselves rather than give them a meal for a day puts them on a plane above the corporate social responsibility programmes of many a corporation and the charitable actions of individual philanthropists and foundations.