OCA recently completed a two-year partnership with seven impact investors and USAID using “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. Specifically, TRAIN’s goal was to reduce investor risk by combining a new, streamlined due diligence approach with a talent-enabled model offering post-investment support.

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 (400% above target!).

We’re hoping to extend TRAIN’s impact far beyond our first $24M of investments. For this reason, we are pleased to share our TRAIN due diligence tools, developed in coordination with our TRAIN investor partners. We hope they will be helpful for other investors developing and growing similar platforms to catalyze investment for SGBs in Africa and around the world. Please reach out to our team at contact@opencapitaladvisors.com if you are interested in additional partnership opportunities like the ones described here.