Location
Sub-Saharan Africa
Stakeholders involved
Public organizations, foundations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
Lead organization
Scale
N3F is on a mission to empower SMEs to deliver safe and nutritious foods in Sub-Saharan Africa at scale through a blended finance approach comprised of a debt financing facility and tailored technical assistance. With a target of USD $60 million, N3F aims to finance 60 nutritious food SMEs across 15+ countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, aspiring to reach 7–10 million end-consumers with safe and nutritious foods.
million (USD)
nutritious food SMEs
countries
end-consumers
Co-investment model
N3F, a partnership between GAIN and Incofin, is an impact-first fund, with consumer nutrition at its core and a blended finance structure offering debt financing to SMEs providing safe and nutritious foods to local consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa. It channels private capital into SMEs by combining impact investing with nutrition expertise through a screening approach to assess financial viability and nutritional outcomes. Alongside each financial investment, the N3F provides targeted technical assistance, impact monitoring, assessment and knowledge dissemination.
Impact
million raised to date
million servings of nutritious food annually
million consumers
With USD $11.5 million raised to date, N3F has provided financing to 8 SMEs so far, with the first 5 jointly producing over 500 million servings of nutritious food annually, including fortified flours, legumes, fish and cold chain services. These efforts are reaching an estimated 3 million consumers – about three-quarters of whom live in low- and middle-income households.
N3F’s support goes beyond financing; through targeted technical assistance, it helps SMEs strengthen their environmental sustainability. One example involved working with Good Nature Agro to explore large-scale biochar production using groundnut shells.
This innovative approach aims to enrich soil health and opens the door to generating carbon credits, combining climate-smart agriculture with economic opportunity.
N3F’s commitment to gender equity is reflected in both its investment decisions and impact assessments. Three out of five portfolio companies are led or co-owned by women, highlighting the fund’s focus on supporting businesses that actively address gender disparities and promote women’s empowerment in leadership. The first five investees are all 2X Global aligned, meeting at least one of the quantitative 2X criteria (four investees met two criteria). The first five investee firms employ a total of 348 women, representing 39% of total employees (63% of positions held by women are permanent employees).
Levers and enablers
N3F provides senior and junior debt to high-impact SMEs through short- and medium-term loans – up to 2 years for cyclical and non-cyclical working capital requirements, for USD $300,000–3 million. Its long-term loans (with mezzanine as an option) – up to 7 years – are also for USD $300,000–3 million.
Funding from public organizations, including USAID, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Government of the Netherlands, was critical for its design and launch. GAIN has designed new impact monitoring metrics and a nutrition-scoring investment tool that N3F applies to all pipeline companies.
up to 2 years for cyclical and non-cyclical working capital requirements, for
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and
up to 7 years
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Barriers
One barrier was the need to convince investors of the viability of this model since it is the first investment fund specifically focused on nutrition. It was also essential to demonstrate the financial sustainability of the fund, including its ability to manage financing costs, deliver returns within acceptable timeframes, and meet market demand for nutrition-sensitive solutions. Equally important was showing investors the fund’s potential to scale both social impact and financial returns. In the context of declining official development assistance (ODA), concessional public lending is urgently needed to bridge the gap, alongside development finance institutions (DFIs) to unlock the transformative potential of such innovative models.
Lessons for scaling
- Ensure strong potential for scalability through strategic partnerships, with a robust pipeline of SMEs supplying safe and nutritious food to domestic consumers in Africa;
- Encourage ODA donors to embrace greater risk in pursuit of impactful solutions as first loss financing from them can be critical to a program’s success;
- Urge DFIs and public development banks (PDBs) to adopt this facility model as a pilot in their own portfolios;
- As DFIs and PDBs will likely scale up the adoption of similar models over the next 3–5 years, seek to demonstrate returns on investment and measurable nutrition impacts.
