ACELI AFRICA | Agri SMEs Business Coaching | WYLDE International Case Study

Background

Aceli Africa is a market-based platform designed in partnership with the Global Development Incubator (GDI) and the Council on Smallholder Agricultural Finance (CSAF) to address constraints on both the capital supply and demand sides of the agricultural SME lending space. Aceli Africa aims to mobilize over $700M in private sector lending for agricultural SME lending in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania by 2025. To achieve this goal, Aceli Africa will provide financial incentives to increase the risk appetite of 25+ financial institutions (both global and local) while also facilitating technical assistance to expand the ability of high potential SMEs to qualify for and manage the financing. With support from leading bilateral and philanthropic funders, including DFID, IKEA Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, Good Energies Foundation, Small Foundation, and USAID, Aceli Africa is now poised to transition from design to set up and launch in August 2020.

The Challenge

Agricultural SMEs need reliable access to finance to realize their growth and impact potential. However, the risk in agri-SME lending is twice as high as other sectors while returns are 4-5% lower, limiting capital flows to agricultural SMEs today.

The Solution

Aceli Africa addresses these challenges with solutions tailored to increase addressable demand through technical assistance so more SMEs have the capacity to qualify for and manage to finance

WYLDE International is to deliver business coaching sessions to Agri SMEs selected by Aceli Africa

to participate in the AMI ‘Grow Your Agribusiness’ program. The program runs from October 2020 to April 2021. The fully virtual, 7-month program consisting of 7 online webinars and 7 one-to-one business coaching sessions.

The principal objective of our coaching intervention is to close gaps identified during the diagnostic assessment of practice areas.

Target Beneficiaries

Business owners/ managers of agricultural enterprises in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania whose revenues are between US$ 50,000 and US$ 500,000.

The Impact

The WYLDE team has so far coached 50 agribusiness and their senior managers. Our coaching sessions have assisted the enterprises in

• Business owners having clarity on their core business identity

• Assisting business owners to identify and map opportunities for growth

• Addressing any growth and business model challenges (or opportunities)

• Closing any business and financial management gaps