This report takes stock of the market for impact investing and examines the conditions that would allow the market to grow and realize its potential.
... See More + Historically, there have always been investors who cared about more than just financial returns. Governments and philanthropists, for example, have set up investment vehicles with mandates to promote social and environmental goals. Over the last decade, impact investing has gained prominence as an approach to investment that aims to achieve both financial returns and social or environmental goals.1 This has created a dynamic but somewhat disorganized market of diverse participants, standards, and concepts. Although still small, the market is attracting considerable interest, and it has the potential to increase in scale, and thereby contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate goals.
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Women are significantly underrepresented among the investment decision-makers at private equity and venture capital firms, as well as in the leadership of companies that receive this investment capital.
... See More + Women hold only 10 percent of all senior positions in private equity and venture capital firms globally, and women-led enterprises collected less than 3 percent of global venture capital in 2017 (Preqin 2017; Zarya, 2018). These firms provide a unique and sizable source of capital for entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Although this asset class represents a small portion of total global assets under management, it provides entrepreneurs access to funding when public equity markets and debt may be less viable sources of capital. Private equity and venture capital represent approximately US$3 trillion of more than US dollar 75 trillion global assets under management. Nearly US dollar 800 billion is dedicated to funds investing in emerging markets. Our research examines gender balance, defined as leadership teams with at least 30 percent of men and women, in private equity and venture capital funds and the companies they invest in within emerging markets. Our focus includes East Asia (including Southeast Asia), Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors explore the relationship between gender balance and fund performance, and the roles that general partners, the vehicles investing private equity and venture capital funds, and limited partners, the source of capital, can play in alleviating gender gaps in investment funds and their portfolio companies.
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The Ethiopia Urban Land Supply and Affordable Housing Study (EULSAH) responds to the request fromthe Government of Ethiopia (GoE), Ministry of Urban Development and Construction to carry outfollow-on technical assistance to the Ethiopia Urbanization Review (EUR) jointly published by theWorld Bank and the GoE in 2015.
... See More + The EUR calls for a robust institutional framework to support efficient and sustainable land management and housing delivery, urban governance, and municipal finance, taking into account Ethiopia’s constitutionally entrenched system of land tenure.EULSAH aims to inform policy decisions on how to address the growing demand for urban land andaffordable housing in the context of rapid urbanization in Ethiopia. It supports two interrelatedcomponents, Urban Land and Housing. The Urban Land component has two subcomponents. The first subcomponent “Urban Land Cadaster” was successfully delivered to the GoE in May 2017. The second subcomponent “Urban Land Supply” along with the “Housing” component are featured in the EULSAH.The Ethiopia Urban Land Supply and Affordable Housing Study is a product of close collaborationbetween the World Bank and the GoE. The Terms of Reference were developed based on technicaldiscussions and numerous consultation activities with national and local government officials,including discussions with the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet members, state enterprise leaders,private sector actors and development partners. These were undertaken during the finalization of the EUR and a subsequent scoping mission in October 2015. The inception report was presented to the GoE Task Force in June 2017; this was followed by two video conferences with the task force to discuss preliminary findings from urban land supply and affordable housing respectively. A technical consultation workshop on the key findings and preliminary recommendations on policy changes and institutional reforms was held with national and urban local governments, the private sector, academics, and development partners in November 2018. A high-level national consultation workshop was held in Addis Ababa with key stakeholders for the final draft reports on May 10, 2019 to seek further feedback on the revised reports with a focus on how to move the policy recommendation forward.
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