Anglo American announces the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with EY to provide 100 hours of pro bono business support to southern Africa-based small-medium businesses through its Impact Finance Network (IFN) programme.
This will form part of a pilot project with the goal of growing the support for southern Africa-based IFN-supported businesses and extending similar pro bono offerings to similar businesses in Brazil, Chile and Peru. The announcement was made at the Impact Investment Conference, in Johannesburg today.
The EY team will provide their expertise pro bono via their global corporate responsibility program, EY Ripples. Through EY Ripples, EY experts share their distinctive skills, knowledge and experience with impact entrepreneurs driving progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Through this collaboration with the IFN, EY aims to help participating impact enterprises improve their businesses, gain market knowledge and maximise their investment potential.
The IFN programme was created to break down barriers between impact businesses and investors and to accelerate investment deals. This is done through supporting businesses looking for finance, preparing them for investment with pre-investment technical assistance and matching them with aligned investors.
This partnership forms part of Anglo American’s longstanding commitment to supporting South Africa’s national imperatives on education and job creation through entrepreneurship.
Emma Parker, Manager of Sustainable and Impact Finance for Anglo American, said: “We believe that through strategic partnerships we can achieve more economic diversification and drive long-term positive impact in a sustainable way. We are excited about the partnership with EY and the support our SMEs will receive from the coaching and excited about the future of impact investing at Anglo American. We began to leverage impact investing strategies in 2021, because of the advantages it presents to progress towards our corporate sustainability goals, as well as stakeholder value and impact.”
To date, IFN has worked with more than 85 businesses in southern Africa and supported 24 companies to close deals with a value of $49 million (~R848 million), supporting around 28,000 jobs. South Africa makes up the bulk of these numbers, where 70 companies were provided with technical assistance, 18 companies closed deals with a value over $24 million (~R415 million), and over 6,000 jobs were supported.
Hennie Human, EY Africa Consulting Leader, said: “EY is looking forward to contributing towards growing new enterprises in Southern Africa, to build businesses that are sustainable and provide long-term value for their clients and customers, our economy and for society as a whole. We have a wealth of commercial expertise and experience, and we are eagerly anticipating sharing it with IFN participants.”
The IFN conference brought together pitching businesses and investors in South Africa and the region and featured targeted roundtables and discussions about the role of catalytic capital, regenerating food systems, health and community, supporting youth entrepreneurship, education, and invest in climate and nature including the Just Energy Transition, as well as networking and partnership opportunities for those attending.
