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Small Foundation is pleased to support the Financing for Agricultural SMEs in Africa (FASA) initiative – a fund-of-funds investment and learning partnership – alongside a group of ecosystem partners working to expand access to finance for agricultural SMEs across sub-Saharan Africa.
FASA combines catalytic capital deployment with a structured learning agenda. At its core is a system-level challenge: investors often have limited visibility into fund-level economics, particularly in markets where track record and data are scarce. This lack of transparency influences how capital is allocated and can constrain investment into high-potential but underdeveloped segments.
FASA is designed to address this gap directly: building a database of evidence through systematic data collection and analysis across participating funds. This learning component sits alongside active investment, with the aim of developing a clearer understanding of what drives returns and impact, and how different capital structures operate in practice. Over time, we hope this learning can support fund managers in refining their models while giving capital providers greater clarity on how different forms of capital, including concessional funding, can be deployed more effectively.
“The sector’s data is distributed across a highly fragmented universe of agri-SMEs that improve livelihoods, strengthen food systems and build resilience. FASA’s learning agenda will unpack how patient and risk capital can best reach those enterprises in greater volume, and in ways that can best support their performance and impact. By aggregating data and learnings at scale and disseminating results, FASA seeks to help fund managers design stronger vehicles, investors allocate capital with greater confidence to the sector, and donors and philanthropies identify where their interventions can be most effective.”
– FASA fund manager, Hugues Vincent-Genod, Director, Growth & Strategy at I&P
Small Foundation’s contribution is focused on the learning component of FASA, drawing on prior work in financial benchmarking and data collection across the agricultural finance ecosystem. Building shared datasets takes time and iteration but can play a meaningful role in shaping how capital is allocated.
FASA has already shared a first report: The Landscape of Agri-SME Funds in Africa. Mapping 175 funds across the continent, the study reveals that the market segments with the greatest additional potential are also the ones with the least access to finance. The report closes with seven strategic recommendations, calling on donors, policymakers, and stakeholders to prioritise transparency and data sharing to enable better, more tailored approaches to agri-SME financing.
Through FASA, there is an opportunity to extend learning and investment across a broader set of funds. Comparable data across portfolios can help test assumptions around capital structuring, risk-sharing, and performance while identifying conditions needed to mobilise additional investment. Insights from this process will be shared widely, with the aim of supporting a more transparent and coordinated approach to financing agricultural SMEs.
For Small Foundation, this reflects a continued focus on the systems that underpin capital allocation. How capital is structured and deployed matters as much as how much capital reaches a sector, and FASA is a practical mechanism to work on that question in live markets, with real funds.
