At RENEW, we see opportunities in Africa where others too often only notice the problems. We invest rather than provide handouts, by finding promising businesses, connecting them to investors around the world and growing them into world-class companies. We do this because we believe that many growing businesses together create the engine that lifts entire nations out of poverty. Our vision is to become the best middle market investment firm in Africa and investing in 20 countries across the continent.

Since 2012, we have been pioneering an innovative blended-finance model that partners with the development community and focuses on investing in high-potential small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Africa. This blended model allows us to invest in smaller deals that are often overlooked by larger investors, but are too big for microfinance. We then help these companies build disciplined, gender-smart management systems and teams and grow them into market leaders. As a result of our investment work in Ethiopia, we have become one of the most active SME investment firms in East Africa, and the Impact Angel Network or IAN (our network of angel investors) has grown to become the largest North American-based angel network dedicated to investing in SMEs in Africa.