Generation Empowerment Fund

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The Generation Empowerment Fund (GEF) is a one-of-a-kind blended finance facility focused on improving the holistic well-being of children through a child-lens investment approach, especially focused on improved outcomes for health, education, and climate resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Strategic Priority

Funding Catalyst

Partnership Builder

Improving the holistic well-being of children through a child-lens investment approach

By 2050, more than 1 in 3 children in the world will live in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), yet children in SSA continue to face intensely critical challenges on account of social and climate challenges. The Generation Empowerment Fund (GEF) is a blended finance facility in partnership with Save the Children Global Ventures, Kaizenvest, GSF and IDP Foundation.

Intended Impact

Evidence for scale

Demonstrating to the impact investing community how to prioritize and effectively manage impact for children through innovative models.

Access to affordable capital

Improved access and capacity to deploy affordable finance through child-lens investing frameworks.

Improved education outcomes

Improved access to learning, gender and climate outcomes for underserved children.

Data driven decisions

Use of evidence backed decision making to improve financial inclusion and impact for children.

Investment and technical assistance facility

Through a US $50m investment facility, the fund will make loans primarily to banks, microfinance institutions and other small to medium enterprise (SME) lenders that will on-lend to low-fee private schools as an emerging SME segment. The fund will also selectively offer direct lending to healthcare and nutrition companies that demonstrate distinctive children’s impact.

Through the technical assistance facility, the fund will test and scale a one-of-a-kind programme that links impact investment to learning outcomes generation in low-cost private schools. The fund will also rely on resources and networks of partners to provide technical assistance to both financial institutions and education providers, to improve access to finance and outcomes for children. In partnership with lean data providers, the fund will seek to engage directly with children in an effort that will uniquely seek to give voice to children like never done before. An additional US $5-10m will be earmarked for activities of the technical assistance facility.

First phase launched in Kenya

The Incentives for Learning programme in Kenya, co-funded by IDP Foundation, The Waterloo Foundation, and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is the first phase investment of GEF of close to $2mn. Through this investment, we are working alongside two local financial partners – Premier Credit and Jackfruit Finance to introduce incentive-linked loans to low-fee private schools in Kenya, which will reward schools for improved literacy and numeracy outcomes.

GSF is the technical partner responsible for overall management of the programme. IDinsight is the Assessments and Learning Partner. The programme includes 300 schools as part of the research study, of which 150 schools will receive impact-linked loans. Read more here

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Funding Catalyst

Partnership Builder

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