The Project
Opportunity International (Opportunity) is a global organization that designs, delivers and scales innovative financial solutions that help families living in extreme poverty build sustainable livelihoods and access quality education for their children. Opportunity is leading development of the Climate Collateral Alliance (CCA), a blended investment vehicle that combines commercial impact capital, catalytic credit support and technical assistance. It is targeting financial institutions in seven sub-Saharan Africa countries that are actively lending to women borrowers in agriculture (e.g., smallholder farmers or ag-MSME entrepreneurs) as well as borrowers implementing regenerative agriculture and climate-smart agriculture practices as a way to foster climate adaptation.
The CCA creates a comprehensive system of financial incentives to boost the mobilization of local financial capital at the intersection of climate, gender-lens lending and smallholder farming agriculture. It is anchored by a credit support vehicle that will leverage $20 million of catalytic capital to de-risk and incentivize the origination of loans to farmers.
Value and Outcomes
The CCA is motivated by Opportunity’s 53-year history of working alongside women and low-income communities. By actively promoting regenerative agriculture as a nature-based solution at the core of climate adaptation, the CCA can directly address the scarcity of risk-weighted capital and skewed risk underwriting in agriculture, which prevents the mobilization of local capital at scale. The CCA’s design responds to direct feedback from Opportunity’s financial institution partners, which shared their pain points regarding climate-related credit risk management, scarcity of price-efficient capital, and the cumbersome processes of accessing foreign climate-related financing.
For more information on Opportunity International, visit their website.