The Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund has released a new learning publication highlighting a critical but often overlooked factor in Africa’s job creation efforts: the role of well-designed services in turning investment into real employment opportunities, particularly for young women.
Titled Investing for Impact: Designing and Delivering Services to Facilitate Job Creation, the publication builds on four years of experience from the Fund, offering insights into how financial investments alone are not enough to drive meaningful employment outcomes across the continent. Instead, it argues that the quality, structure, and intentional delivery of services around those investments determine whether businesses are able to grow and create jobs at scale.
The release marks the second instalment in a broader learning series by the Fund, which was launched in 2022 as a 200 million dollar initiative aimed at supporting African small and medium-sized enterprises through locally driven investment vehicles. The programme is part of a wider strategy to unlock at least 250,000 work opportunities for young people, with a strong focus on women who are often excluded from formal economic systems.
At the heart of the new publication is a simple but powerful argument: capital on its own does not create jobs. While access to finance is essential, businesses also need tailored support services to scale effectively. These include business development support, market access assistance, operational guidance, and strategic mentorship.
The Fund’s experience shows that when such services are intentionally designed and delivered alongside investment, they significantly improve the ability of businesses to expand and hire. Without them, even well-funded enterprises may struggle to translate financial backing into sustainable growth.
This insight reflects a shift in how development finance is being approached across Africa. Traditional models have often focused heavily on providing capital, assuming that businesses will naturally grow once funding is available. However, the Africa Growth Fund’s findings suggest that this assumption is flawed, particularly in markets where structural barriers such as limited infrastructure, weak market linkages, and skills gaps persist.
By contrast, the Fund adopts what it describes as an ecosystem approach, combining investment with technical assistance and capacity building. This model aims to strengthen not just individual businesses but also the broader investment environment, enabling more inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
A key emphasis of the learning book is gender inclusion. The publication highlights how services can be specifically tailored to address the unique challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and workers. These may include limited access to networks, cultural barriers, and unequal access to resources.
By designing services with these realities in mind, the Fund has sought to ensure that investments lead to job opportunities that are not only numerous but also accessible to women. This aligns with the broader Young Africa Works strategy, which aims to enable millions of young Africans, especially women, to secure dignified employment by the end of the decade.
The publication also reflects on lessons learned during the Fund’s implementation. In earlier phases, the initiative faced challenges in aligning expectations, refining its investment processes, and ensuring that its approach effectively supported local fund managers. Over time, adjustments were made to strengthen systems and improve outcomes, demonstrating the importance of adaptability in complex development programmes.
Another major takeaway from the report is the importance of local ownership. The Fund channels capital through African-owned and African-led investment vehicles, rather than relying solely on external actors. This approach is intended to shift power within the investment ecosystem and ensure that decisions are informed by local knowledge and context.
By supporting these investment vehicles, the Fund indirectly reaches hundreds of businesses across sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, fintech, and consumer goods. This multi-layered structure allows for broader impact while also building long-term capacity within Africa’s financial ecosystem.
The release of the learning book comes at a time when job creation remains one of the continent’s most pressing challenges. With a rapidly growing youth population, Africa needs to generate millions of new jobs each year to sustain economic stability and growth.
The Fund’s findings suggest that achieving this goal will require more than just increased investment volumes. It will depend on how effectively those investments are deployed, and whether they are supported by the right mix of services to enable businesses to thrive.
As development partners, investors, and policymakers look for scalable solutions, the lessons outlined in the publication are likely to resonate widely. By highlighting the link between services and job creation, the Africa Growth Fund is contributing to a broader rethink of how impact investing is designed and delivered on the continent.
Ultimately, the message is clear: if Africa is to unlock its full economic potential, investment must be paired with intention. The difference between capital that sits idle and capital that creates jobs may well lie in the services that surround it.
