Abstract

The agriculture sector is the economic backbone for most developing countries and is crucial for strengthening food security, increasing incomes and driving inclusive and sustainable growth. However, the sector remains largely untapped due to low levels of productivity exacerbated by the effects of climate change. To strengthen resilience to climate change and efficient functioning of food systems, significant financial investment is required. The public sector and donors cannot handle this alone; the private finance and investment sector needs to increase its financial commitments. Under the World Bank-funded AICCRA project, we have set up Zambia’s first science-driven accelerator program for climate-smart agribusinesses, where the aim is to provide technical assistance as well as de-risking funds to scale climate-smart agricultural research innovations as well as to catalyze private finance into these agribusinesses to increase their impact tailor-made technical assistance to strengthen the commercial capacity as well as the sustainability performance of our Accelerator Partners. After having onboarded a diverse portfolio of high-profile agribusinesses earlier this year, I’m proud to share with you the results of our efforts. The following deal book presents an overview of our project, our approach and our portfolio. If you are an investor looking to create financial returns alongside sustainable impact in Zambia’s climate-smart ag sector, I encourage you to get in touch with myself and our amazing entrepreneurs.