The World Economic Forum’s Network for Impact Capital in Frontier Market engaged in a conversation on how to unlock and scale investment in frontier markets. They discussed the best practices to overcome the complexities and systemic failures of difficult investment markets, and what ambitions existed to scale successful models and approaches.

Against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical fragmentation, protracted conflicts, and the multiplying effects of the climate, energy, and food crises, we witnessed increasing fragility across the globe. At the same time, we saw an unprecedented momentum across humanitarian, development and private sectors to engage in partnerships to mitigate risks and accelerate sustainable solutions for the most vulnerable populations. While important progress had been achieved around climate change, other areas were still insufficiently addressed.

There was an opportunity for businesses and investors to expand involvement in humanitarian and fragile contexts beyond philanthropy and charity. Nevertheless, as the impact investment community continued to grow, we needed to build better awareness on the powerful potential for impact alongside financial returns in difficult markets.

The network was launched by the Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative, an initiative launched by the World Economic Forum in 2019 as an approach to scale market driven solutions that measurably benefited and increased the resilience of at-risk and crisis-hit communities.

Speakers:

Jumoke Jagun-Dokunmu is IFC’s Chief Investment Officer & Head of Fragility for Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya. She leads the implementation of IFC’s work in fragile and conflict-affected situations in Africa, including forced displacement issues, which are a top priority for IFC. This includes IFC’s Africa Fragility Initiative, a five-year program dedicated to supporting responsible and inclusive private sector-led growth and job creation across African countries affected by fragility and conflict. Prior to this role, Jumoke was IFC’s Regional Director for Eastern Africa where she oversaw its operations across sectors and offices, and managed key relationships with clients, partners, and governments in the sub-region. Prior to IFC, Jumoke worked in the Nigerian banking sector providing corporate banking services to corporate clients, mainly in the beverages, fast moving consumer goods, and tire sectors. She holds an MBA from the London Business School and a B.Sc. (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Gary White is the CEO and Co-founder of Water.org and WaterEquity, nonprofit organizations dedicated to empowering people in the developing world to gain access to safe water and sanitation. Gary developed Water.org’s WaterCredit Initiative, creating new financing options for poor populations to meet their water supply and sanitation needs. He also developed and now leads WaterEquity, the first-ever impact investment manager dedicated to ending the global water crisis in our lifetime. Bringing more than 30 years of experience to work on solving the global water and sanitation crisis, Gary is a leading advisor in the water and sanitation space, counseling organizations such as the IKEA Foundation, Inditex, Reckitt, AB InBev, Amazon Web Services, the Water Resilience Coalition, and Bank of America on responses to the global water crisis. He is also a founding board member of the Millennium Water Alliance and Water Advocates.

Andrej Kim leads efforts to deepen and co-design multistakeholder collaboration between the World Economic Forum and International Organisations to tackle key global challenges and invest in resilience for a more sustainable future. He also focuses on bringing together humanitarian and development actors with corporates and investors to catalyse flows of private capital into financially sustainable opportunities that benefit communities in frontier markets. Andrej was formerly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and the EU Delegation to the State of Israel. Andrej completed the Global Leadership Fellows programme of the World Economic Forum and holds an MA in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe.

Runa Alam is the co-founder and CEO of Development Partners International (“DPI”). DPI is a leading private equity firm investing throughout Africa, and manages $2 billion in three funds, African Development Partners I (“ADP I”), ADP II and ADP III. ADP I and ADP II are Cambridge benchmarked top quartile Africa funds. The ADP funds have won numerous awards and been commended both for delivering top returns to investors while delivering top levels of ES&G and impact work. DPI is a gender balanced firm and seeks to focus its impact work on three buckets: Gender Balance, Climate Change, and Job Creation and Enhancement. ADP III also been chosen as the first “2X Challenge Gender Balance Showcase fund” by the OECD country development institutions.

Moderator:

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