OCA shares new learnings on “missing middle” investing in Africa

OCA recently completed a two-year partnership with seven impact investors and USAID called “Talent to de-Risk and Accelerate Investment” or TRAIN. Our aim was to catalyze more investments into high-impact “missing middle” small & growing businesses (SGBs) in East and Southern Africa – businesses which often face particularly acute challenges in raising capital. Together with our partners we realized >$24M of transactions with an average size of $1M, including investments as small as $50K. We were excited to see this total far exceed TRAIN’s original objective to catalyze $5M and demonstrate the viability of this model to scale. We’re hoping to extend TRAIN’s impact far beyond our first $24M of investments. For this reason, we are pleased to share our collected learnings, which we hope will benefit others as they catalyze investment for SGBs in Africa and around the world. Please reach out to our team at contact@opencapital.com if there are ways we can collaborate.