The African Development Bank, CDC Group, and the Dutch Good Growth Fund have jointly committed $31m to the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria (FAFIN).

Overall, Sahel Capital has raised $65.9m at the final close of its debut fund FAFIN to drive agricultural transformation in Nigeria.

Mezuo Nwuneli, Managing Partner at Sahel Capital, said: “We are especially grateful to the immense commitment and support we have received from our existing investors in making FAFIN a reality.”

“We also look forward to partnering with our incoming investors to driving catalytic growth in the sector through our partnerships with strong agribusinesses,” he said.

As part of this round, KfW Development Bank has also offered to increase its commitments to FAFIN by an additional $10m, subject to final approvals, which if provided would increase the fund size to $76m by December 2017.

FAFIN was co‐sponsored by the Federal Government of Nigeria (Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Federal Ministry of Finance), the German development bank – KfW, and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), and was initially launched in 2014 with $32.8m in commitments.

Sahel Capital intends to invest these funds over the next two years backing sustainable businesses that seek to revolutionize the Nigerian agribusiness landscape while creating jobs, improving productivity, and strengthening priority value chains.

Since FAFIN’s launch in 2014, Sahel Capital has assessed over 100 companies and elected to invest in four indigenous high growth companies. 

Through these investments in the dairy, edible oils, poultry and cassava value chains of Nigeria, FAFIN has created over 500 new jobs ‐ 50% of which are occupied by women and youth ‐ and improved the lives of over 1,000 small holder farmers and their families by supporting innovative business incentives and out‐grower schemes.

With the additional capital raised, Sahel Capital aims to invest in 9 – 10 additional companies which would create over 4,000 more direct and indirect jobs, and further uplift the lives of over 36,000 smallholder farmer families across Nigeria.