Comments on: Impact investing in Africa https://socialenterprisebuzz.com/2013/06/17/impact-investing-in-africa/ Tue, 26 Nov 2013 21:23:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: PeterBurgess https://socialenterprisebuzz.com/2013/06/17/impact-investing-in-africa/#comment-60 PeterBurgess Sun, 30 Jun 2013 14:04:00 +0000 https://socialenterprisebuzz.com/?p=4327#comment-60 Why does the social impact community talk so much about impact investing as if impact investing is something new and good? The hard fact is that all investing has impact, and a very large amount of investing has very bad impact on people, place and planet.

As far as I am concerned it is high time we called to account every investment so that society knows the impact … positive or negative … on people, place and planet. Every economic activity pulls in resources, and produces outputs, good and bad. These activities change the state of people, place and planet … and in many cases there is serious value destruction.

The story of Africa is tragic. There are huge investments in Africa that are value destroying for people, place and planet while generating substantial profit returns for investors and influential insiders.

Sadly, the World Bank and the Regional Development Banks have done little over the past several decades to set the stage for value adding investment that optimizes for people, place and planet in a meaningful way. They should have done a lot better.

Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics

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