TG Africa was commissioned to conduct an appraisal of the Africa Agriculture and Trade Investment Fund (AATIF) investment of EUR 17.5 million in NSIA Bank in Cote d’Ivoire.

AATIF is an innovative public-private partnership dedicated to the enhancement of agricultural value chains in Africa, with the ultimate objective to improve food security and ensure business growth for African farmers. AATIF investments target primary production, as well as agricultural businesses along the entire agricultural value chain which are financed directly or indirectly. Direct investments focus, among others, on processing companies and farming operations. On the other hand, indirect investments target local financial institutions, which through loans can lend to smallholder farmers, as well small and medium enterprises. The fund is supported by different organizations: Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) as Technical Assistance (TA) Facility Manager, DWS Group (DWS) as Investment Advisor, International Labour Organization (ILO) and UN Environment (UNEP) as Sustainability Advisor. AATIF expects that Financial Institutions (hereafter «FIs») can expand their activities in the agricultural sector, and also that the overall conditions for social and environmental management at FIs are improved.

The main objective of this appraisal was to evaluate how the investment contributed to changes (institutional capacity, products and portfolio, ESG / CSR impact) in the Financial Institutions (FIs), and how in cascade these changes impacted the agricultural value chain, focussing on intermediary beneficiaries (investees) and end beneficiaries (farmers and farmers’ associations).

A second objective, which was also an intermediary step for achieving the first objective, was to produce – as a core methodological base – both:

1. A specific framework for the Financial Institutions (FIs) that might be used for other evaluations of AATIF’s investments. Indeed, the current methodological framework developed by AATIF for rapid appraisals focusses on end and intermediary beneficiaries, it is not specific to FIs.
2. And a macro analysis of the most relevant agricultural sector or value chain for the FI, which will allow to identify the right stakeholders to approach in a short period of time and with limited resource.

For more details, please read the article «Understanding ESG practices and ESG investments – the case of AATIF investment in NSIA Banque Côte d’Ivoire.»

Team members: Abybah Traoré, Patrick Balliet, and Francie Sadeski.