Greater financing opportunities for African private health sector
The African healthcare is heavily dependent on the private health sector. By improving access to finance for the sub-Saharan African private health sector, the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) is contributing to better healthcare in the region.
DGGF has supported in piloting the Africa Health Infrastructure Fund (AHIF), aimed at stimulating innovation in financing health SMEs when effective government structures are lacking. AHIF is a launch facility that evolved from the Medical Credit Fund (MCF), a fund established by PharmAccess together with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. MCF is the first and only dedicated fund facilitating loans for health SMEs that are often unable to secure formal bank loans.
Larger and more flexible loans
It became clear that there is a substantial group of enterprises that requires larger and more flexible loans, which MCF could not cater for. DGGF’s Seed Capital & Business Development programme supported AHIF to meet these financing needs. DGGF invested €800,000 in the AHIF launch facility which has broadened and strengthened the investment pipeline, increased the loan sizes, enabled cooperation with banks as well as other financial institutions and increased support from health SMEs to all enterprises in the healthcare sector. Moreover, it provided important extra legroom to develop and test several innovative financing products.
Catalytic
DGGF’s Seed Capital has proven catalytic in attracting early-stage sponsors like the Pfizer Foundation ($1 million) and the Calvert Foundation ($3.5 million) while reducing the investment risk for follow-on investors.
See how DGGF contributes
Read more about the success of AHIF and DGGF’s contribution in the article How the Dutch Good Growth Fund is improving access to finance for African private health sector (pdf).