Root Capital

completed

The proposed investment consists of a senior loan package of US$10million to Root Capital, Inc. (“Root Capital” or the “Company”). Founded in 1999, Root Capital is a nonprofit development financier that provides loans and financial training to farmer aggregators, cooperatives and agricultural SMEs in Africa and Latin America. The proposed financing package will be supported by the Private Sector Window of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (“GAFSP”).GAFSP funding plays a catalytic role to create opportunity to support innovative private sector investments and deliver a level of additionality and impact beyond what is possible through IFC’s regular operations. The financing package will support Root Capital to scale its Sustainable Trade Fund operations, its core lending arm, in order to become a financially sustainable business, while addressing the funding needs of the “missing middle” in the agricultural finance space; i.e. rural businesses that are too large to access credit from microfinance institutions but considered too remote to secure financing from commercial banks.