Initiative for Global Development Launches IGD AGINVEST

SEATTLE - May 7, 2013 - PRLog -- Washington, DC / SEATTLE, WA  –  At the IGD Frontier 100 Forum in Cape Town, South Africa, the Initiative for Global Development (IGD) today announced a new initiative to catalyze greater private investment in African agriculture. IGD AGINVEST is a business-led effort defined and shaped by leading companies across the agriculture value chain. Companies involved share a strong commitment to expanding their businesses in Africa while also demonstrating significant social and economic impact.

While launching the new initiative, IGD President & CEO Mark Green told IGD Frontier Leaders that “our goal is to build a platform to leverage your collective expertise, insights, resources, and passion for working collaboratively to drive business growth while achieving development impact. IGD AGINVEST is a platform to prove what many of you have told us—that business can have a bigger, more sustainable, and faster impact on achieving development and reducing poverty.”

At the Frontier 100 Forum, IGD also released a new report, IGD AGINVEST: Catalyzing Agribusiness Investment in Africa (http://www.igdleaders.org/insight/igd-aginvest-catalyzing...), that explains the approach in greater detail. The report includes a case study of how AGINVEST has helped Seed Co Limited, Africa’s largest proprietary seed breeding, production, processing, and distribution group and a subsidiary of AICO Africa Limited, advance an innovative model for delivering high-quality farming inputs from a range of partner companies to smallholder farmers in Tanzania. Seed Co accomplished this by leveraging a range of corporate resources and donor funding to prove a concept with strong potential for replication.

“With support from IGD AGINVEST, Seed Co is helping smallholder farmers in Tanzania increase their yields and enhance their livelihoods,” says IGD Vice President Helen Mant. “At the same time, this also provides commercial growth potential for companies providing inputs and financial services to this underserved market.”

About the Initiative for Global Development
The Initiative for Global Development (IGD) is a 501(c)(3) organization that drives significant poverty reduction by catalyzing business growth and investment in the developing world. IGD brings together an influential Frontier Leader network of CEOs and senior executives with the interest and capacity to make strategic investments in high-need regions, with a current focus on Africa. Through its network, IGD fosters global connections, shares frontier market knowledge and insight, and promotes business-driven development to create economic growth and opportunity that can lift generations from poverty.  Learn more: www.igdleaders.org

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Jenna Swalin
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