Who we are

Who we are

Prospero Limited is a Zambian registered not-for-profit company that specialises in supporting innovative private sector growth and inclusive economic development..

Prospero’s areas of expertise are investment facilitation, market system development and small and medium enterprise (SME) strengthening. We have teams specialising in several key economic sectors; food & agriculture, tourism & conservation, industry & manufacturing, and business services.

Prospero has crafted an approach to private sector led growth at the intersection of market systems development and SME investment facilitation. We help SMEs to raise finance that allows them to introduce new products, services or business models that deliver profitable growth for the business and has wider, positive impact on sector value chains. We help growth-oriented businesses, wherever they are on the journey from co-financed innovation grants to impact-oriented investment capital.

Prospero supports private and public sector organisations to reduce barriers to market entry or address barriers to successful market engagement to create growth opportunities for large numbers of SMEs. We also engage with MSMEs to help them to capitalise on these new opportunities, ensuring that the benefits of business innovation are spread as widely as possible.

Alongside our sector work, Prospero focuses on i) strengthening Zambia’s impact investment ecosystem, ii) creating a pipeline of investment-ready SMEs, and iii) facilitating impact investments. Throughout our portfolio, this complementary, pipeline-building approach assists growth-stage businesses to evolve from high risk, early-stage grant support to readiness for various types of commercial finance appropriate to each business’s stage of growth.

Focus Sectors

The programme is designed to support business investment and innovation across five focus sectors: