ImpactAlpha Open

Investing in Africa’s farmers + creative exits for chaotic times

Dennis Price · April 22, 2025

Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, a free sample of the top news and views from last week on ImpactAlpha.

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In this week’s Open:

  • Lucy Ngige on Heifer International’s catalytic approach to African agriculture
  • Amy Cortese explores the creative ways impact LPs are looking for exits 
  • Rallying cries for impact investors in the crosshairs
  • Making emerging market food systems more efficient 

Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • How Heifer International is using grants and loans to show African agriculture is investable. Heifer International isn’t known as an impact investor, but the agriculture NGO is applying catalytic financing tools to demonstrate the investability of Africa’s farmers, agriculture businesses and startups. “Our job is to support them to become bankable,” Heifer International’s Surita Sandosham tells ImpactAlpha’s Lucy Ngige. Read more.
  • Restive LPs look to secondaries and other creative exits to recoup their capital. This was supposed to be the year when initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions came roaring back. Instead, tariff threats and global volatility have slammed the exit door shut. That is driving a red-hot secondaries market and a search for alternative exits as LPs look for ways to get out of increasingly long-in-the-tooth investments. Learn more.
  • In the polarized US Capitol, employee ownership brings lawmakers together. The idea that hardworking Americans should own a stake in the companies they are helping to build is resonating across the aisle in a largely divided US Congress, reports Impactalpha’s Roodgally Senatus. At the Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, Congressional Republicans and Democrats came together to extoll the virtues of employee stock ownership conversions. See why.

Agents of Impact

🏃🏽‍♀️ On the move

  • Camila Thorndike, previously with Rewiring America, joined The Lemelson Foundation as a climate action program officer.
  • IMPACT Community Capitalpromoted Alex Asaturian to senior associate of investments.
  • BlueHub Capital welcomed Hana Migliorato, previously with MassHousing, as director of strategic initiatives.

The Week’s Spotlight

🌾 Making emerging market food systems more efficient

Tech-enabled “marketplaces” that connect food supply chains from farmer to consumer, and deliver critical goods and services throughout the chain, were the top funding category for venture capital firms focused on agriculture and food startups last year, according to AgFunder’s “Developing markets agrifoodtech investment” report, out this week.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: A call to action

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: A call to action from impact investors in response to growing political risk in the US. Plus, how employee ownership is bringing lawmakers together across the aisle. And the strategies and structures LPs are using to get their money back in a volatile market environment. Listen.

🗺️ The Activest Podcast: Shaping the future

In this “watercooler episode,” Micah Gilmer and John Killeen, and panelists Homero Radway and Ellen Ward, who work together at public finance research firm Activest, reflect on strategies for making it through troubled times, what’s inspiring them, and what’s grabbing their attention in public finance and the bond markets. Check it out.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Reinvestment Fund seeks a program manager for early-childhood capacity building and capital access. 
  • The Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois has an opening for an investment officer to focus on diverse and emerging managers.
  • Green Climate Fund is on the hunt for a senior project specialist for agriculture and forestry in South Korea.

Dozens of job opportunities are available to subscribers each week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

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