Infrastructure & the Enabling Environment

The Need

Large parts of Africa and Asia lack basic infrastructure. Traditional bilateral and multilateral efforts leave much work to be done. Sub-optimal priority-setting and policy-making exacerbate the challenge to constantly renew infrastructure.
Continued risk deters long-term investment capital.
New actors are needed who bring resources and know-how, and most of all customer-first values.
Transformation of this sector requires the active participation of government, and right incentives to inspire that participation. That results in a better enabling environment, eliminates bottlenecks, and improves policy making.

The LINK Fund moves risk from financial (blended) to operational, where social entrepreneurs and south-north actors leverage trust and attract private/public investment.
LINK Fund business models further reduce risk – while hybrid financing mechanisms, built on the foundation of trust social enterprises establish with communities, generate longer-term / stable cash flows.
The result is a dynamic ecosystem of actors building “agile infrastructures for yield” at the BOP.

The LINK Fund cements the formation of infrastructure as an asset class. The combination of values-led actors such as social entrepreneurs, together with hybrid financing vehicles de-risked by public funding bodies, accelerates the development of infrastructure to underpin lasting economic opportunity.
The LINK Fund facilitates critical infrastructure investments which not only sustain improvements to the human condition, but help, together with policy, foreign and/or domestic investment, to develop entire national economies to end the slavery of aid dependence.

Hundreds of millions lack access to basic services and infrastructure such as electricity. Social entrepreneurs, policy-making partners, and early pro-poor technology adopters have brought products such as solar lights to tens of millions.
For example, the vast majority of rural African families use kerosene lamps. These lamps provide poor quality light, emit toxic fumes, and are expensive to use. Fuel costs use up to a third of a rural family’s disposable income each year.

Social enterprises and others have made solar solutions almost ubiquitous in response to skyrocketing demand, resulting in significant and measurable saving for families, and health and study hour benefits.
By 2040, thanks largely to private sector actors, almost a billion people in Africa alone will gain access to electricity.

Universally positive, enabling more study hours, significant cost savings for families, no harmful fumes

We are able to support policy and infrastructure innovation at unprecedented scale.