The Brief: Expanding fair finance and economic opportunity in America

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

• Expanding fair finance and economic opportunity in America
• Sustainable fish farming in Africa
• Climate finance solutions for emerging markets
• Winners at the Impact Oscars

Featured: Investing in America

Ben Franklin’s revolving loans and 80 more ways to expand opportunity with fair financing. You may know him as an American founding father. You may not know that Benjamin Franklin was also an OG impact investor. A revolving loan fund that Franklin set up in his will made 5% loans of up to $20,000 (in today’s money) to help young tradespeople become business owners. Each repaid loan funded a new loan to the next worker. By 1990, when the funds expired as planned after 200 years, thousands of workers had become owners, and two cities – Boston and Philadelphia – had accumulated millions of dollars for public use. “Franklin showed clearly how extending fair financing to working people is crucial to expand opportunity,” ImpactAlpha contributing editor Antony Bugg-Levine writes in his first column, adapted from his book, “Investing in America,” due out in June. “Expanding access to finance alone will not solve our challenges. We cannot solve them unless we do.”

• Expanding access. Investing in America is not only about investing in specific places or in “Made in America” supply chains, Bugg-Levine says. “It is the broader idea that extending loans and investments to the people and places that have been shut out of mainstream capital markets, on terms that advance rather than trap them, is crucial to make the promise of America as the land of opportunity real for more people.” The same gap in access to financing, he says, “shapes the health clinic that gets paid only after it delivers care, the entrepreneur whose idea dies waiting for a bank to return a call, the local government that could improve services tomorrow if it could borrow today.” In a useful reminder to “supply-side progressives” and advocates for abundance, he argues that building more only helps if the people who need it most can access and afford what gets built. “If expanding supply is not coupled with expanding access to financing, the people who already have money or are well-served by investors will convert their existing advantage into even greater wealth.”
  
• Investors and entrepreneurs. In “Investing in America,” Bugg-Levine profiles 80 examples in 42 states of creative ways to extend fair financing to people and places the mainstream market overlooks. In El Paso, Texas, workers at a landscaping company used a loan from the private credit firm Apis & Heritage (view profile on ImpactAlpha Edge) to buy their retiring boss’s business. In Detroit, Mich., a new fund is helping first-time buyers purchase homes with lower down payments, through a financing model built in partnership with local government, donors and Homium. In North Carolina, a local entrepreneur received financing from the nonprofit fund Connect Humanity to build a broadband provider serving rural households that big telecoms ignore, at lower cost than what residents were paying for dial-up.
  
• Building together. Bugg-Levine says these innovators are “bridge builders able to work across the lines that divide most of us.” That includes a role for government, which has stepped in when private capital has failed to flow where it’s needed most with creations such as the 30-year mortgage, the Farm Credit System, the Small Business Administration, and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. “That same toolkit – loan guarantees, tax incentives, concessional capital programs, public pension investment – is available today,” he writes. “Harnessing private investment to expand worker ownership, finance new energy sources, make homeownership accessible again: these are not left or right ideas. They are American ones.”
  
• Keep reading, “Ben Franklin’s revolving loans and 80 more ways to expand opportunity with fair financing,” by Antony Bugg-Levine.

Dealflow: Financing Fish

Aqua-Spark raises $48 million for sustainable fisheries in Africa. Netherlands-based Aqua-Spark was one of the earliest impact investment firms to focus on sustainable seafood and fishing economies. Its open-ended fund for sustainable fisheries in Africa secured a $48 million investment with backing from the EU’s agriculture financing initiative, AgriFi, German development bank KfW, and the Livelihood Impact Fund. Gatsby Africa, the private foundation of the family behind UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, also invested; Aqua-Spark’s Ben Gimson formerly led Gatsby Africa’s investment team. Aqua-Spark hopes to raise $250 million over the next decade for its Africa strategy, which invests in hatcheries, fish farmer services, and technologies that improve operations and yields for small-scale producers. Tilapia farming has strong potential, Aqua-Spark says. By moving growth capital to early-stage producers, it hopes tilapia farms will “start to meet the criteria of larger investors.”

• Africa portfolio. Aqua-Spark has backed fresh and frozen tilapia producer Lake Harvest, which operates in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Uganda; Chicoa fish farm in Mozambique; Indian Ocean Trepang, a sea cucumber producer in Madagascar; and Aquarech, which links small and mid-sized fish farmers in Kenya to markets and fish feed. The Dutch firm’s global portfolio stretches to more than 20 companies. It faced a substantial setback in its assets under management last year when eFishery, a portfolio company in Indonesia, went bust following fraud allegations.
  
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Global Innovation Lab to incubate eight climate finance solutions for emerging markets. Farmland in the Philippines. Biodiversity in Madagascar. Climate insurance in Brazil. The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance selected for its new cohort eight financing mechanisms for climate adaptation and resilience in emerging markets. Adaptation Asia and Planetary X’s Panra Fund in the Philippines, for example, is looking to raise $50 million to provide revenue-based financing and technical assistance for climate-smart agriculture. In Madagascar, Miarakap and Kinomé are co-managing the Mitsiry Biodiversity and Climate Fund, a blended-finance fund for companies working to restore natural ecosystems and farmland. StoneCo and global insurance giant Zurich are working to provide climate insurance for Brazilian small businesses to help them access credit. Some of the teams in the Lab’s cohort will be eligible for pre-seed capital after a seven-month design and testing process.

• Grounded in reality. The Lab has supported the launch of 87 climate instruments since 2014; those vehicles have collectively mobilized nearly $4.4 billion. Notable alumni include Climate Fund Managers, which recently closed its second fund at more than $1 billion for climate adaptation infrastructure in emerging markets. The blended finance Climate Resilience and Adaptation Finance and Technology Transfer Facility, or CRAFT, raised $186 million for companies supporting climate adaptation. Brazil-based Vox Capital incubated its land-use transition credit fund with the Lab. Recognizing a more difficult climate fundraising environment, the Lab’s Ben Broché called this year’s concepts “ambitious, but also grounded in the realities of raising and deploying capital in emerging markets.”
  
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

• Paris-based energy transition specialist Rgreen Invest raised more than €900 million ($1 billion) for its fifth Infragreen fund from the European Investment Fund, France’s Pension Reserve Fund and other investors. (Rgreen Invest)
  
• Indian startup Newtrace raised $6.3 million from HDFC Bank, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Aavishkaar Capital and other investors to license its technology for producing green hydrogen. (Economic Times)
  
• Amber Semiconductor in California closed a $30 million Series C round for its power management software that is designed to improve energy efficiency and curb power losses at data centers. (Amber Semiconductor)
  
• ResponsAbility provided $21.5 million to Sri Lankan financial institution Citizens Development Business Finance to support access to credit for women-led small businesses and for green lending. (responsAbility)
  
• View recent impact capital allocations on ImpactAlpha Edge.

Signals: Pop Impact

The Impact Oscars: Movies that made a difference. From Hollywood box-office winners like “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” to indie crowd-pleasers like “Folktales” and “Orwell: 2+2=5,” social and environmental impact is playing a starring role on the big screen. Climate change is an increasingly frequent theme. Five of the 16 nominated films that are set on Earth in the present, recent past or future, acknowledged climate change in the plot, according to Climate Reality Check. Social themes from inequality and racial injustice, to AI and misinformation, are also shaping the stories that have audiences flocking to theatres. Excellence in impact storytelling is not yet recognized by the Academy, so Dmitriy Ioselevich is kicking off ImpactAlpha’s unofficial Impact Oscars. First up: Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” which we wrote about last week, snags Best Celebration of Culture. Other winners:

• Best Comedy: “Good Fortune.” Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut is more than a slapstick comedy – it’s a clever exploration of the gig economy and the disconnect between the rich and the poor. A quarter of workers in the US participate in the gig economy; often it’s their main source of income. When Seth Rogen’s character, a wealthy venture capitalist, sees what it’s like to depend on gig work, he’s quickly humbled by how hard it is to make ends meet. “Good Fortune” doesn’t offer much in the way of solutions to the precariousness of a gig economy, writes Ioselevich, “but promoting more empathy and compassion between employers and workers is at least a good start.” Ansari co-stars as a struggling documentary filmmaker, with Keanu Reeves as a fallen angel.
  
• Best Documentary: “The Alabama Solution.” There was no shortage of powerful documentaries last year. But Ioselevich gives the nod to Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s penetrating look at abuse and coverups inside an Alabama prison. Using real footage filmed by inmates, “The Alabama Solution” tells the story of a group of incarcerated men who launch the Free Alabama Movement, and in 2016, help organize the largest prison strike in US history. Despite the public pressure and a federal investigation that found Alabama’s prison conditions unconstitutional, little has changed. Last week, Alabama’s legislature held a hearing on a bill to bring more oversight to the state’s prisons. Could an Oscar spotlight be the push needed?
  
• Most memorable conspiracy theory: “Eddington.” Ari Aster’s film captures the social tension that broke apart many communities during the Covid pandemic. In the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington, a stand-off between the sheriff and mayor over mask mandates quickly devolves into other divisive issues. What makes “Eddington” a brilliant social commentary, says Iolesevich, is how it portrays characters who are “falling down the cascade of conspiracy theories.” Adding intrigue is a data center that is being built on the outskirts of town. “There’s a way of looking at the film and saying all of those stories and all of these characters are now just training data. The movie itself is training data,” Aster told Time in a recent interview.

• And the Oscar goes to…

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:

• May 13-14: Total Impact Summit, Philadelphia. Save $600 with code IMPACTALPHA.

• May 19-21: ReFed Food Waste Solutions Summit, Charlotte, NC.
• May 26-29: GLI Forum Latam, Lima, Peru.
• May 27-29: Katapult Future Fest, Amsterdam
• June 1-5: Sustainable Finance Initiative’s Impact Week, Hong Kong. Early bird pricing is now available. Apply for tickets.

Africa50 is recruiting an investment associate in Casablanca, Morocco, for its infrastructure fund… Britebound, a Boston-based nonprofit focused on childhood learning, seeks an associate director for mission impact investing and an impact investing associate… Nia Impact Capital is accepting applications for summer interns… Today is the final day for startups to apply to LACI’s AI accelerator program for Latin America and the Caribbean.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– March 16, 2026