A Step Towards Peace

Letter from the CEO

Celebrating $1 Billion in Loan Disbursements!

Root Capital to Partner with The MasterCard Foundation

We’re thrilled to announce a new partnership with The MasterCard Foundation that will offer finance and training to more than 100 early-stage agricultural businesses in Senegal, Ghana, and Côte D’Ivoire. Ultimately, this initiative will reach businesses that increase incomes for more than 300,000 smallholder farmers and an estimated two million family members.

We’re deeply grateful for the support of The MasterCard Foundation, and that of all our valued donors, investors, and partners, in helping us unlock the potential of agricultural enterprises. Read more about the partnership on our website.  

New and Noteworthy

• Uganda is Africa’s largest coffee exporter, and the industry has the potential to provide higher and more stable incomes for thousands of people. In this blog post, our East Africa Loan Portfolio Manager, Richard Tugume, reflects on how access to finance and training can unlock the potential of coffee businesses to generate economic opportunities for those who need it the most.

• For many smallholder coffee farmers, being able to afford credit isn’t the first financial challenge they face — it’s being able to access credit at all. Featuring insights from our Senior Vice President, Nate Schaffran, this piece by Fresh Cup Magazine offers an excellent overview of why access to credit is critical to coffee cooperatives and their producer-members.

• Rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns will continue to create challenges for farmers over the next several decades. In this blog post, our resident environmental expert, Elizabeth Teague, offers a great 101 of how our clients promote climate-smart agriculture, a farming philosophy that not only helps farmers address these challenges but may soon be the only way to feed our planet.

• Our Advisory Services team works tirelessly to ensure that our clients have the training they need to achieve maximum impact in their communities. Visit our Facebook page to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their recent workshops in Guatemala and Honduras on promoting farmer resilience through income diversification.

What We’re Reading

Impact Investing

• Lessons from a Development Impact Bond, Stanford Social Innovation Review
• Can Enough Development Professionals Speak the Language of Finance?, DevEx
• Impact Investment Starts with Understanding Impact, Forbes

Agricultural Finance

• The Risk Farmers, NPR/Planet Money
• Coffee — the “Peace Crop”? USAID Agrilinks
• AfDB Youth Empowerment Effort Addresses Africa’s Fragile Industrialisation, AllAfrica.com

Our Impact Focus Areas

• Young Chocolate Entrepreneurs Emerge in World’s Cocoa Leader, The Washington Post
• Climate Change Predicted to Halve Coffee-Growing Area That Supports 120M People, The Guardian
• Drought Migrants: Two Honduran Brothers Weigh the Weather Odds, WBEZ Chicago
• Agriculture Needs a Makeover to Lure Young People Back to Farming, Reuters