We’re proud to announce that the Silverlands II Fund has been awarded Social Fund of the Year, Africa, by Environmental Finance within their 2023 Sustainable Investment Awards. The same fund won Environmental Fund of the Year last year, which shows the broad reach of the fund.
By focusing on a key target group, smallholder farmers, our strategy achieves both substantial environmental and social #impact outcomes.
The Sub-Saharan African agricultural sector presents an exciting opportunity to achieve both return and impact. The key is to carefully direct investments to “fix” issues in particular agricultural value chains. This unlocks that valuechain, raising incomes for smallholder farmers, improving productivity on existing agricultural land and reducing potential deforestation.
Our main impact target, smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, represents the lowest income sector of Sub-Saharan African economies and achieve crop yields that are about one-third of the global average. By introducing rotation crops, better quality inputs and through extension work, we can double food production, raise incomes, benefit women disproportionately and preserve Sub-Saharan Africa’s natural capital.
Our Silverlands II investments provide 4,300 qualityjobs and have had an enormous multiplier effect. We estimate that 94,000 people have directly benefitted economically, most of whom are smallholder farmers, and some 61% of whom are women. These farmers have seen their annual incomes rise by ~55%, an extraordinary boost. The food produced by Silverlands II investments is enough to provide for ~2.7m people for a year. And annual production of protein is sufficient to cover annual protein requirements for ~5.2m people for a year.
“By fixing key agricultural value chains in Africa, Silverlands II has demonstrated that it is possible to scale businesses and to tackle multiple key developmental challenges faced in Sub-Saharan Africa”, says Gary Vaughan-Smith, CIO at SilverStreet.
Julia Wakeling Bird, Head of Impact and ESG at SilverStreet, says, “It is moving to see the positive benefits that our operations are having in people’s lives on the ground. I’m excited about the growth in future, how many more lives will benefit and the significant income benefits for large numbers of women.”
The judges praised the fund for its “great results on improving conditions for local communities”.
