Gro Ventures Commits to Mobilize $25M in Loans to East African Farmers at Clinton Global Initiative

NEW YORK - Sept. 26, 2013 - PRLog -- Gro Ventures, a data analytics and advisory business focused exclusively on African commodities, yesterday announced its commitment to mobilize $25 million in loans to East African co-ops and farmer-based organizations in an onstage presentation delivered by CEO Sara Menker at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York City.

Leveraging its expertise to create a new wave of data-driven credit products, Gro Ventures has developed strategic partnerships with the African Risk Capacity Agency, a specialized agency of the African Union, and commercial banks to mobilize the loans to farmers in East Africa – a commitment with the aim of increasing the flow of capital from banks to the agricultural sector.

“Although agriculture accounts for 32 percent of Africaʼs gross domestic product and employs 65 percent of the continentʼs labor force, less than one percent of commercial bank loans currently go to the sector,” said Menker. “This is a large gap we at Gro Ventures are seeking to fill, first by recognizing that the scarcity of agricultural data is the root cause of the lack of commercial bank lending to the sector, and by developing a set of data-driven credit products that will jumpstart the flow of credit.”

A point Menker highlighted in her presentation at the 2013 CGI Annual Meeting is that big data is often broken down into three “V”s, including volume, or the amount of existing data; velocity, or how fast it is changing; and variety, or the forms in which data comes.

“In African agriculture, the volume of data is almost nil, and although both its velocity and variety are rich and complex, both are uncaptured,” Menker said. “As innovators in real-time data collection and aggregation, we are capturing these three ʻVʼs, and as financial experts performing complex data analytics, we are adding our fourth ʻVʼ to African agricultural data, which is value.”

Although this project will begin in East Africa, it has potential to spread beyond the region and catalyze investment in agriculture across the continent.

About Gro Ventures

Gro Ventures is a data analytics and advisory business focused exclusively on African commodities that seeks to advance African commodity market development through creating the necessary data infrastructure to enable data driven decisions by both public and private sector players. With head offices in Nairobi, Kenya, Gro Ventures two operating units are GRO Intelligence, providing timely African agricultural market data and analysis services, and GRO Energy, providing African energy market advisory services. For more information, please visit http://www.gro-ventures.com.

About the Clinton Global Initiative

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2,300 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 430 million people in over 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $76.7 billion.

CGI also convenes CGI America, a meeting focused on collaborative solutions to economic recovery in the United States, and CGI University (CGI U), which brings together undergraduate and graduate students to address pressing challenges in their community or around the world, and, this year, CGI Latin America, which will bring together Latin American leaders to identify, harness, and strengthen ways to improve the livelihoods of people in Latin America and around the world. For more information, visit clintonglobalinitiative.org and follow us on Twitter @ClintonGlobal and Facebook at facebook.com/clintonglobalinitiative.

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