Ecosystem engagement as investment practice

Cover page for Africa Growth Fund report with Mastercard Foundation logo, title 'Ecosystem engagement as investment practice', yellow callout panel and partner logos at the bottom.

This book documents how the Fund’s ecosystem strategy was developed, what we learned by executing it across four distinct segments of the ecosystem, and where the work needed goes beyond what any single fund can achieve.

From capital to jobs: the job creation pathway

Capital does not create jobs on its own. It creates the conditions in which jobs can emerge.

The Fund’s role was to back vehicles and enterprises that might otherwise struggle to access capital. Given how capital was designed and how support was delivered, what happened to jobs — and which conditions consistently shaped job creation?

Shifting Capital, Shifting Power

We have been examining our work at the Fund from multiple perspectives, and what it takes to build a prototype of this ambition and scale. This book is the first significant attempt to document what we learned in the work of deploying capital to investment vehicles.