Our 2025Impact Report
Insights from Small Foundation and our partners on an evolving investment Ecosystem as we work together towards our vision of a thriving Africa free from extreme poverty.
Learn more
Welcome From Connor Brosnan
Our vision at Small Foundation is a thriving Africa free from extreme poverty. Achieving this takes imagination, innovation, and the courage to take risks—anchored in deep collaboration.
We believe the expertise and solutions exist locally, and that lasting change comes from supporting those closest to the challenges. We work with mission-aligned partners that expand access to key enablers such as finance and markets, generate insights and share knowledge, and foster collaboration across the ecosystem. Together, we help create the conditions for rural prosperity.
While each partner addresses different, often overlapping aspects of change across the system, this year’s impact report shines a light on a handful of stories from the rapidly evolving space of agricultural finance. To illustrate their impact and potential, we spoke with partners, the ventures they back, and the customers whose lives and livelihoods are directly affected.
These stories offer just a glimpse of what’s possible. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together and excited for what’s ahead. Thank you for being part of this journey.
Sincerely,
Conor Brosnan
CEO & Chair
Our impact in 2024
-
We disbursed funding of €5.1M to support 36 partners through grants and social investments
-
This funding went to 13 investments, 16 network partners, and 6 research projects
-
By the end of 2024, our fund and accelerator partners had investments in 4,700+ African SMEs
-
Our partners worked across 44 countries in Africa
-
We approved an additional €5.6M in funding
-
Partners worked across 46 countries in africa
Weaving Change Across Africa
Complex problems cannot be solved by one person or one organisation. Small Foundation supports mission-aligned networks that help people and organisations find each other, align their efforts, and, where the conditions allow, build towards a common purpose that none of them could have achieved alone. Below we explore case studies and reflections of networks demonstrating strong practice, and the often-invisible connective tissue that makes their work possible.
Complex problems cannot be solved by one person or one organisation. Small Foundation supports mission-aligned networks that help people and organisations find each other, align their efforts, and, where the conditions allow, build towards a common purpose that none of them could have achieved alone. Below we explore case studies and reflections of networks demonstrating strong practice, and the often-invisible connective tissue that makes their work possible.
Connection
Every network begins with relationships. Kenya’s Association of Countrywide Innovation Hubs (ACIH) connects innovation hubs across rural counties that have often been overlooked by capital and networks concentrated in capital cities. What began seven years ago as a handful of isolated hubs has grown into a network of over 160 members, sharing funding leads, peer learning, and a growing digital platform that puts opportunity directly in front of hubs that would otherwise never hear of it.
A network is a dynamic living thing, and as the network grows it pushes its roots to the rivers where there are resources
– Kenneth Njihia
Across our network partners, members describe shared purpose and values as the foundations of any working network – these elements provide clear strategic intent and motivation to invest time in the network . Trust follows, when built with patience and intention.
Our partners reflect how it can be nurtured through in-person, curated convenings, as well as ongoing activities between convenings (ABCs). What emerges isn’t just contacts, but working relationships – trusted enough to be useful, purposeful enough to last.
The starting point of long-term change is relationships
– Elizabeth Howard
Coordination
African Food Fellowship brings together food systems leaders across sectors and geographies that rarely share a table – fisheries, horticulture, agri-finance, policy, research. Coordination happens deliberately across the network’s fellowship cohorts: fellows working in varied parts of food systems are connected across cohort years, so expertise and momentum can build rather than stay isolated within a single group. That cross-pollination – one fellow’s work reaching another’s, one cohort’s lessons reaching the next – is how individual insight becomes network-wide opportunity, with the potential to reach across African food systems.
If there is no visibility [of challenges], there is no support
– Ledama Masidza
Practical and productive coordination can emerge when strong connection has been established – it happens when people or organisations exchange ideas and improve each other’s work. Small, consistent choices adding up to real efficiency. Across our network partners, we hear of the choices made to focus on coordination rather than trying to do everything themselves, passing opportunities on to whoever is best placed to use them, intentionally coordinating to leverage resources effectively.
Collaboration
Agribusiness Market Ecosystem Alliance (AMEA) provides a platform where governments, farmers organisations, agribusinesses, financiers, and service providers identify what’s broken in terms of business development services for agri-SMEs and jointly explore how to improve them. One outcome took six years of dedicated collaboration: an international standard for business development services (BDS) to drive improved quality of BDS support across the sector – since adopted independently in Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.
Things cannot be scaled unless you take into account the local context
– Mark Blackett
Our partners describe how networks create the conditions for emergence of new ideas and opportunities – creating space for people to move from a competitive mindset to a collaborative one. Partners share how as their networks have moved from connection, to coordination, to becoming truly collaborative, they begin to act as one rather than the sum of their parts, and what emerges has the potential to change systems.
Network Leadership and Supports
Behind every network sits an often invisible layer of support – training, funding, and the people whose job is weaving the strands of a network together. Network leadership training – such as through the Network Leadership Series and the Bopa Di Peo Fellowship – focuses on building the necessary skills – facilitation, relational leadership, bringing people together around a shared goal – through hands-on practice rather than theory alone. Small Foundation sees an ongoing need for these skills and capabilities to be supported, in addition to the operating costs of the networks themselves.
If anyone is truly interested in moving the needle in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, I think it’s very important that we look into how networks work and look into the organisations that help those networks to lead and survive.
– Ajoke Omoware
Closing video title here
The achievements of these networks have been made possible because people found each other, learned to openly share what they know, and – with enough trust and time – co-created new collaborative spaces in service of their common purpose. A network’s story is rarely linear, but coming together and weaving connections, through to coordinating efforts, and learning to truly collaborate, is how systems can change.
Our partners
Through our investment, networks, and research practices, we partner with intermediaries and ecosystem-building initiatives that support African MSMEs to thrive. Here is a snapshot of what our partners achieved in 2024, through the lens of our collaboration.
60 Decibels
In 2024:
- Completed research to measure the wellbeing of coffee farmers in East Africa and published findings
- Revised the Farmer Thriving Index tool based on research insights
A&A Collective
In 2024:
- 538 members across the African tech and investment ecosystem (42% female)
-
Representing 26 countries globally
-
Membership includes 138 investors, 59 operators/investor support organisations, and 155 firms
AFRACA
In 2024:
- 110 institutional members across 30 African countries
- Convened AFRACA Central Bank Forum on agricultural policies and financial inclusion
- Finalised impact study on Central Bank policies on rural and agricultural finance
- Held AFRACA Regional Policy Meeting in DRC
African Food Fellowship
In 2024:
- Coordinated 4 cohorts of fellows, with 218 graduating from the Food Systems Leadership Programme
- Fellows launched 20+ food systems actions
- Introduced yearly in-person network gatherings, connecting fellows across cohorts and impact areas
Agri-SME Learning Collective
In 2024:
- 24 institutional members
- Three workstreams: BDS/TA, catalytic capital, livelihood & environment
- Began development of a catalytic capital framework to guide practice
- Commenced work on BDS/TA segmentation guidance (published in 2025)
Agribusiness Market Ecosystem Alliance
In 2024:
- 36 members; 25 in Africa across 9 countries
- Launched the international standard ISO 18716 on professional farmer organisations
- 1.36 million farmers benefitted from AMEA peer reviewed BDS approaches
- Published 5 case studies on TA effectiveness
The bigger picture:it takes an ecosystem
This report offers only a slice of our story. Beyond the ventures featured here, our investment, network and research partners are generating insights, building connections, and driving systemic change across the rural MSME ecosystem. We invite you to explore their work and the broader efforts shaping a thriving Africa.