Connecting developers and financial institutions to scale nature-positive investment in Africa
Why is nature-positive investment critical for Africa?
The significance lies in helping address a market-development challenge: promising nature-positive opportunities and potential investors do not connect automatically. They need trusted relationships, clearer investment propositions, shared expectations and support to navigate commercial and institutional barriers. The Commercial Opportunities Working Group of African Natural Capital Alliance (ANCA) creates a mechanism for addressing these obstacles collectively rather than leaving individual organisations to tackle them in isolation.
For NCIT, this creates an opportunity for leverage: a focused contribution of strategic thinking, facilitation and communications can influence a much wider network of financial institutions and project developers. Co-chairing the working group places the team within the relationships and discussions through which nature-finance priorities, partnerships and investment pathways can take shape.
The wider value is an African-led approach to natural capital finance that connects commercial viability with biodiversity, climate resilience and community benefits. It supports ANCA’s ambition to move beyond fragmented initiatives towards a more coordinated system for identifying opportunities, building confidence and mobilising capital. These are enabling achievements; they should not yet be presented as evidence of transactions closed or capital deployed.
This work reflects NCIT’s ambition to unlock barriers to action by combining science, strategy and communications to create real-world impact. It translates complex nature and climate challenges into practical engagement with the institutions that can help finance solutions. The partnership offers three complementary routes to impact:
- Identifying leverage points: targeting coordination failures, investor–developer communication gaps and investment-readiness barriers rather than duplicating existing conservation delivery.
- Combining tactical delivery with longer-term systems change: using working-group leadership, summit activities and communications to build momentum while developing the relationships and collaboration mechanisms needed for a stronger nature-finance market.
- Connecting knowledge with decision-making: creating routes for evidence, practical experience and nature-positive opportunities to inform financial-sector priorities and project development.
How is the Commercial Opportunities Working Group connecting investors with nature-positive projects?
The key achievement is building the relationships, shared understanding and practical foundations needed to connect financial institutions with nature-positive opportunities across Africa—not simply convening conversations but creating a stronger basis for collective action and future investment.
The approach combined strategic leadership, purposeful convening and practical support, with the Commercial Opportunities Working Group providing continuity beyond individual events.
- Shaping a shared commercial agenda: helping define the working group’s purpose, priorities and ways of working around investor–developer relationships, commercial opportunities, innovative finance and investment readiness.
- Designing action-oriented summit activities: developing detailed formats for public-private partnership discussions and two hackathons—Designing Effective Public-Private Partnerships and Accelerating Bioeconomy Finance Pathways.
- Building shared understanding: structuring dialogue around the different language, risk perceptions, information needs and expectations of investors and project developers, alongside opportunities for matchmaking and follow-up support.
- Developing the foundations for continuing collaboration: advancing plans for a virtual workspace and investment-ready project dashboard, alongside the working group’s proposed project-visibility, pipeline-development and monitoring tools.
- Strengthening ANCA’s narrative and positioning: contributing to an approach that connects thought leadership, member stories and stakeholder engagement with the practical development of Africa’s natural capital markets.
Who are the key stakeholders in the African Natural Capital Alliance working group?
- NCIT at the University of Exeter provides strategic input, working-group leadership, programme and session design, facilitation, and communications support.
- ANCA and FSD Africa provide partnership leadership, secretariat support, financial-sector engagement, technical expertise, and access to continental networks.
- The Commercial Opportunities Working Group includes representatives from major African financial institutions such as Equity Group, Access Bank, Ecobank, Nedbank, KCB, ICEA LION, Sanlam, CrossBoundary, Climate Fund Managers, Blue Finance, JSE and Investec.
- Summit contributors include financial-sector practitioners, public-private partnership experts, entrepreneurs, and coaches supporting practical collaboration. Preparation included a judge-and-coach brief for Simone Smit of The Earthshot Prize.