Wangara Green Ventures

Ebenezer Arthur is the Managing Director of Wangara Green Ventures, an impact investment fund that invests in early stage green businesses in Ghana. The fund is sponsored by Innohub Foundation through the Ghana Climate Venture Facility (GCVF) from the World Bank. He has over 10 years of experience in management consulting, entrepreneurship, angel investment and business acceleration and co-founded Innohub, a Ghanaian business accelerator.  Ebenezer previously worked with EY where he provided IT and performance improvement advisory services to companies across West Africa and has also worked in the financial services industry. He has an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the Imperial College Business School and a BSc. degree in Computer Engineering from KNUST. He is an alumnus of the Oxford Impact Investing Program of the Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Wangara Green Ventures is an impact investment company that invests between USD50,000 to USD500,000 in equity and quasi-equity in Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) in the missing middle that are engaged in renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste management, water management, climate-smart agriculture or generally climate-friendly businesses.

Wangara also supports the growth and sustainability of these SGBs by making available pre-investment and post-investment Technical Assistance Grants to assist their scale and overall Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impact. 

Wangara Green Ventures seeks to promote Ghana’s economic development, job creation and industrial competitiveness through support for clean technology businesses and industries which represent some of the most promising and important sectors of the 21st century. Through the provision of financing and non-financial services, Wangara Green Ventures will support local entrepreneurs that develop innovative technologies and business models in these priority sectors.

www.wangaragreenventures.com 

Africa’s population is expected to reach around 2.3 billion by 2050 with rapid population growth. The youth population is expected to reach over 830 million, by 2050. This will result in 15 million new workforce per year in Africa by 2050, with an average of 11 million per year in the next decade.

This youth bulge is further compounded by the impact of climate change on Agriculture (food security), Energy and Basic Services; which will be essential drivers of the long-term economic growth required to absorb this growing and youthful population. The World Meteorological Organisation recorded more than 1,300 climate-related natural disasters in Africa from 1970 to 2012, which claimed 700,000 lives and caused economic damage worth $26.6bn.

Ghana, like the rest of Africa, has an imperative need to develop businesses that will provide much needed jobs, improved livelihoods and economic growth in a climate-resilient context.

In spite of the urgent need, there is a lack of appropriate funding for early-stage green businesses and a funding gap for early-stage businesses in general, known as the “Missing-middle” of finance. Wangara seeks to address this funding gap by meeting the capital and business support needs of early-stage green businesses.

Wangara aims to contribute significantly to the growth of the green economy in Ghana by providing green businesses with the necessary financial and technical support. Wangara will focus on innovative businesses that have a demonstrable route to a commercial market and now require capital that can be provided on commercial terms for further market testing and business model development leading to a full market rollout. 

Wangara provides tailored financial and business support to innovative early and growth-stage SGBs with a preference to invest and support entrepreneurs with scalable businesses in our priority sectors. Wangara seeks to make a financial return on its investments as well as deliver impact across a variety of metrics, particularly, access to finance, operational efficiency, growth, employment, gender empowerment, environmental, social and governance impact. 

Wangara shall make investments between the range of USD50,000 and USD500,000 per investee company in the first round of investment. High growth and profitable companies would be eligible for follow-on funding after the second year with investments of up to USD1m per investee. 

Wangara aims to follow our companies through their growth process, and successfully exit ventures with a financial return in line with the market. 

Wangara is initially targetted at Ghana with plans to expand to other West African counties. Ghana is politically stable with relatively good governance and one of the largest and fastest growing economies in sub Saharan Africa It is a lower middle income country with a population of 29.77 million and a GDP of 65.56 billion which was currently growing at an annual rate of 6%+ till 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit.

Ghana is on the path of economic recovery after a period of downturn due to an energy crisis, falling commodity prices and a depreciating cedi which saw the country undergo restructuring with the support of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (and the African Development Bank).

I am a Ghanaian citizen and have spent most of my life and career in Ghana. My efforts to address the entrepreneurial growth challenges in Ghana began with Innohub which I co-founded as a business accelerator and impact investment platform. This gave me the opportunity to support SGBs and gain a first hand experience of the capital and business support needs.

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing the world today. However, in places like Ghana and Africa as a whole, this is not a priority as there are still basic needs like jobs, health and education to be met. 

By marrying the need for a green economy with entreprise support and job-creation for that matter, Wangara is building awareness and driving action to solve one of the most difficult problems of our world within a locally sensitive context.

We are starting with Ghana and hope this will catch on in other African countries.

The idea for Wangara Green Ventures came up when I was with Innohub. I experienced first hand the lack of appropriate funding for early-stage green businesses and a funding gap for early-stage businesses in general, known as the "missing-middle" of finance.

Entrepreneurs are typically able to get their ventures off the ground through their own investment and funding from family and friends, grants and personal loans. These sources are unable to bring these early stage businesses to scale hence a need for external financing.

However, the existing sources (banks and traditional investors, including impact investors) are unable to provide the financing required by these early stage businesses to scale due to the high cost of financing, high cost of transactions, perceived higher risks, lack or non-existence of adequate collateral or cash flows, and a general lack of investment readiness.

I established Wangara to bridge the funding gap for early-stage businesses with a focus on green businesses. 

Wangara has since gone on to obtain seed capital from the World Bank and was formally. launched in June 2019. We have so far invested $840,000 in two businesses, Cleanearth Scientific and Akwaaba Feeds, which are into Water Management and Climate-Smart Agriculture respectively.

Africa is faced with a youth bulge which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how well prepared we are and mainly how we engage this youthful populace in productive and meanigful work. SGBs will be very critical in providing these much needed jobs of the future and so early-stage businesses need to be given al the support they require to survive and grow. In a country like Ghana, the highest employer is the government which is not sustainable. 

When I was in university I had the priviledge of setting up a start-up with my colleagues but the business was closed soon as we completed university due primarily to lack of business support. I have also made angel investments which did not go as planned due to the lack of time for adequate business support.

I therefore beleive strongly that early-stage businesses need both capital and business support to create the jobs Ghana and Africa as a whole requires. I also think that the green economy is the future as the impact of climate change can no longer be ignored. This is why think and initiative to support early stage businesses must focus on greening the economy.

I am a Ghanaian who has lived and work in Ghana but also had decent exposure to the West African sub-region and the world at large. My first degree was in computer engineering at KNUST. I also obtained a professional certificate in IT audit and went on to earn an MBA in entrepreneurship from Imperial College London and the Oxford Impact Investing Program. I have worked as an engineer, internal auditor, management consultant, and co-founded a business accelerator, Innohub, which focuses on start-ups and Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs).

My professional career has been diverse and multi-disciplinary which provides me with the requisite range of technical competencies, industry knowledge and management experience required to support start-ups, SGBs and entrepreneurs. I have worked in the aviation, financial services and professional services industries in engineering, IT, operations, internal audit and control, management consulting roles. I have also consulted for various industries including the financial services, telecoms, mining and manufacturing providing a range of consulting services. My role as a consultant also enabled me develop my business development and account management capabilities.

My prior experience as an angel investor and my role in setting up Innohub which is a thriving business accelerator in Ghana is testament to me passion for supporting early stage businesses.

In the early days of Wangara we sought out to partner with an experience impact. investor to serve as a sponsor. This search led us into a partnership with a European impact investor with commendable operations and experience in Africa. 

With this partnership with applied to a donor grant wo enable us seed Wangara Green Ventures which we succesfully won. We, however, had challenges when the government of Ghana delined approving the partnership arrenage as the international development agency needed government approval to proceed.

This led to a loss of interest in proceeding by our European impact investing partner which led to a significant loss in committed capital as well as technical and managerial support.

Inspite of this we proceeded to provide the international development agency with the requisite assurances and subsequently passed their fiduciary and managment reviews and qualified to proceed with the grant and our eventual launch in 2019.

We have since then been able to engage the European impact investing partner to provide us with some technical assistance in aspects such as impact measurement and managment as well as portfolio reporting.

When i completed my MBA from Imperial College I found myself at the cross-roads of blazing the trail in business acceleration by venturing full-time into Innohub with my partner or staying in the comfort of corporate consulting life at a big 4 firm. I still has bill to pay from my expensive MBA program.

I took the decision to become one of the leaders of the emerging entrepreneurial support eco-system in Ghana and quit EY to pursue Innohub full-time. That meant taking a 7-% pay-cut even though I was able to convince a local. corporate to back the work of Innohub and fund our first acelerator program. 6 months down the line we succesfully launched our first accelerator program with a cohort of 9 ventures out of which 4 received funding.

I, however, upon realising that the work  of Innohub was incomplete, further ventured into setting up Wangara with support from Innohub. It has been 4 years into that journey with lots of ups and down yet I have been able to lead the succesful launch of the first green fund in Ghana. Wangara was nomitated as the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) West Africa member of the year.