Literature on Blended Finance

Jack Luft and Tim Chambers, Moving the Needle: Critical Success Factors for Scaling Innovation in Asset Finance for Small and Growing Agribusinesses. With case studies from Kenya, Guatemala and India, September 2016.

A critical part of agricultural and rural development is that farmers and agribusinesses get access to more and better capital assets.  A report (September 2016) by Enterprise Project Ventures, the Shell Foundation and the Small Foundation discusses how such assets can be financed, even if farmers are not organized in strong cooperatives.

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Initiative for Smallholder Finance, Unlocking Local Currency Lending: Foreign Exchange Risk in Agricultural Finance, March 2016

Managing foreign exchange (FX) risk is a critical issue facing finance managers who provide financial services to farmers.  Lenders who fund themselves with foreign currency will limit their local currency exposure by restricting the types of financial products they offer and the volume of capital they make available. This briefing by the Initiative for Smallholder Finance explains that donors can play an influential role in mitigating FX risk by:

  • Overcoming limited institutional expertise in FX management 
  • Supporting individual agricultural lenders on a bi-lateral basis 
  • Developing currency-focused risk guarantees 
  • Creating local currency notes and adapt other proven currency solutions

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From Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance Post-2015 Financing for Development: Multilateral Development Finance
To meet the investment needs of the Sustainable Development Goals, the global community needs to move the discussion from “Billions” in ODA to “Trillions” in investments of all kinds:  public and private, national and global, in both capital and capacity.  

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Innovative Financial Instruments (Blending)
Investment needs in EU partner countries are substantial. Government and donor funds are far from sufficient to cover these needs. Countries need to attract additional public and private finance to drive economic growth as a basis for poverty reduction.

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Blended Finance Vol. 1: A Primer for Development Finance and Philanthropic Funders
An overview of the strategic use of development finance and philanthropic funds to mobilise private capital for development.

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Blended Finance in a Nutshell
Blended finance, the mixing of public, philanthropic and private capital in emerging and frontier markets, can bridge the gap between sceptical investors and financing needs in order to address global challenges like poverty, food security and climate change.

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IFC: How Blended Finance Helped Turn $385 Million Into More Than $4 Billion (3 of 3)
Before allocating large amounts of capital, investors generally look for successful first-of-their-kind demonstration projects to ensure that risks in that particular sector are manageable. And for years, blended finance has provided exactly that.

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A How-To Guide for Blended Finance
A practical guide for development finance and philanthropic funders to integrate blended finance best practices into their organisations.

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Blending Donor Funds for Climate-Smart Investments
The Blended Climate Finance team manages concessionary donor funds to be deployed for investment and advisory projects. These funds aim to address climate change by catalysing private sector investments and advisory projects that would not otherwise happen under current market conditions.

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Blended Finance: Catalyzing Private Capital for Development Impact
Blended finance has tremendous potential to transform development finance as we know it. Through blended finance transactions, public investors can leverage their funds and often higher risk appetites to direct billions of dollars of private capital towards advancing important development priorities.

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Four Challenges for Blended Finance and Development Finance Institutions
Overseas development assistance amounts to about US$135 billion annually, but the cost of paying for the sustainable development goals will be in the trillions. As a result, blended finance is something of a buzz phrase these days.

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Trending: Blending the Fad for Mixing Public, Charitable and Private Money
The point of blended finance is to use public or charitable funds to allow private money to flow to places and projects it would usually shun.

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Blending grants and loans for private sector development: The use of grant elements and the AfDB’s experience
Grant elements in private sector operations are an integral part of the toolkit used by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) for supporting private sector development. 

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