In South Africa we have a toxic combination of systemic inequality, anaemic economic growth and civil unrest that has created our own perfect storm. Of the total population:
LEAD Impact Capital believes that private sector social enterprises hold the greatest potential for unlocking long term, sustainable solutions to the above systemic inequalities.
COVID-19 has exacerbated existing systemic inequalities, potentially pushing an additional half a billion people into poverty and regressing global development by more than 3 decades..
This, together with the catastrophic failure in South Africa of the public sector and civil society to provide for the most basic needs of low-income communities creates an urgent need for crafting solutions to this crisis.
LEAD offers a cohesive solution to investors and SMEs that addresses this crisis. It follows a fund approach to scaling early stage, innovative and commercially viable social impact ventures in South Africa, by providing affordable loan capital, that is sufficiently risk tolerant to post revenue early-stage social enterprises, seeking between R1m – R10m.
This new fund management model draws on the decade long experience in impact investing and Enterprise Development of LEAD.