The long term vision for Aruwa Capital is to continue to showcase the untapped potential that exists when one invests in women as capital allocators, entrepreneurs and consumers. Through our fund, we intend to showcase that there’s a seamless intersection between strong financial returns, social impact and women empowerment through our gender lens investing strategy. We not only see our strategy as the moral thing to do given the role women play in society and the multiplier it can have in terms of poverty alleviation for families, but also because investing in women and for women has been proven to deliver outsized and superior returns. The empirical data shows how gender balance within organizations improves profitability, reduces risks and brings diversity of thought and decision making. We are very intentional about measuring social impact from our investments in terms of jobs created. We think private equity and venture capital investment can be a huge driver in helping to improve employment across Africa. In addition, in line with our gender lens mandate, we also measure the impact our investment has in terms of increasing the number of women in senior management, in the workforce, in supply chains, and on the board. Before we make an investment, we incorporate our standard ESG and gender questions into our due diligence questionnaire to understand what is the basis that we're starting from across these aspects and have action plans to improve these metrics through our investment period.
Commercial returns impact society positively
Within your work, what are some of the misconceptions you’ve noticed regarding what “impact” is all about?
As a gender lens and impact fund, I encounter misconceptions that gender lens investing is “soft and pink”, only entails small investments and only concerns investing in women-owned or led businesses in order to generate any impact, and that you have to sacrifice commercial returns in order to do so. We are proving with our existing portfolio that this is not the case. We invested into a local manufacturing company that provides hygiene goods for women and girls and has women active in its value chain as distributors but is run by a male CEO. We have seen sales significantly increase since our investment illustrating that impact goes beyond just the identity of the founder and that you don’t have to sacrifice commercial returns to positively impact society. Through this investment we have improved employment, livelihoods, access to basic hygiene goods and healthcare, and alleviated poverty.