A perfect storm is characterised by powerful converging forces, which if measured individually would be far less powerful than their collective force.

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:

0 %
live below the poverty line (R1200 per month)
0 %
are food insecure
0 %
of people in cities live in informal housing
0 %
of the population complete high school
0 %
complete tertiary education
0 %
of our youth are unemployed

LEAD Impact Capital believes that private sector social enterprises hold the greatest potential for unlocking long term, sustainable solutions to the above systemic inequalities.

Dream cloud

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.