Prospero is transforming Zambia into a regional impact investment hub for Central and Southern Africa by leveraging commercial capital for positive social and environmental outcomes. We do this by strengthening the impact investing ecosystem, working closely with different ecosystem players including businesses, investors, regulators, financial intermediaries, and impact investing enablers such as the national advisory board on impact investments.

In order to remove bottlenecks, Prospero focuses on:

• Improving the access to Capital. Lack of capital is a significant constraint for growth businesses.  The high cost and stringent requirements make it difficult for companies across different sectors to acquire the requisite investment for expansion
• Boosting partner Capacity. Poor governance and management capacity make many local high growth businesses unattractive for investment, limiting their ability to raise funds for expansion
• Helping establish strategic Connections. Zambian businesses don’t often belong to networks that connect them to investors or other providers of appropriate financial services. A limited number of quality service providers that can support businesses to become investor-ready means many SMEs requiring these services cannot access them.
• Ensuring Compliance levels. SMEs struggle to comply with investors and other financiers’ regulations and expectations. There are also specific areas of compliance within their respective sectors that SMEs struggle to meet.