The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has approved 22 new transactions for the first quarter totaling nearly $3 billion to support businesses in Nigeria and the rest of the world in health, energy, and food security and to revitalise critical infrastructure .
Part of these include a $20 million loan to Loinette Capital, a growing asset-financing company to provide small and medium-sized businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa with access to machinery critical to civil infrastructure and agricultural projects.
The company’s focus is on funding earthmoving equipment and other construction equipment critical in the development of African infrastructure.
DFC said in a statement that there is a $15 million loan to debt and equity fund Incofin cvso to finance women and smallholder farmers around the world. This will enable Incofin cvso , support rural and agriculture-focused microfinance institutions in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
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Also, a $35 million loan to Lendable Decarbonization Fund will help extend debt financing to fast-growing companies working in the energy, transportation, and agriculture sectors around the world.
To back global climate entrepreneurs, the organisation has approved $1.3 million in a pre-investment technical assistance grant to the Lightsmith Group, LLC to help create a new scalable investment platform to provide the full range of equity, credit, and technical assistance to growth-stage climate adaptation companies worldwide. Towards boosting the world’s small businesses, a $30 million loan to MCE Social Capital, a nonprofit impact investor that uses a philanthropic guarantee model, will support the continuation and expansion of the organisation’s lending activities to small businesses and microfinance institutions around the world.
In partnership with USAID, a $100 million loan to FCC Securities, an affiliate of Frontier Clearing Corporation B.V. (“Frontclear”), will enable Frontclear to directly enter into money market transactions in emerging markets globally. This,according to DFC, will provide needed liquidity in local financial markets and foster the development of money markets and interbank lending around the world.
Among others are a $1 million loan to Ilara Health Inc. to help upgrade private outpatient clinics delivering care to underserved communities in Kenya through procurement of diagnostic devices, health management technology, and pharmaceutical products; approximately $500,000 in technical assistance funding to Carbon Ventures Advisors, Ltd. This will enable it to help develop a reforestation project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to restore approximately 6,000 hectares of degraded Miombo woodlands, verify the resulting carbon credits, and, if successful, enable the sale of those credits to buyers of carbon credits. Up to $325 million in political risk insurance will support investments in a grain and oilseed export terminal, grain silos, and an inventory of grain and oilseed in Ukraine. The transaction supports U.S. foreign policy objectives to bolster Ukraine’s economic resilience and critical economic sectors amid Russia’s ongoing war of aggression, and is expected to preserve jobs in Ukraine, maintain critical economic activity in the country’s agricultural sector, contribute to global food security, and buttress companies that provide significant tax revenues to the country’s government.
