Investment: Select Africa

SELECT AFRICA
Select Africa is a retail financial services group that provides micro-credit, investment insurance and financial advisory products to the non-or-under banked market in Eastern and Southern Africa. Select Malawi has established a program to issue loans to employees of the Malawian Government, Malawian parastatals or other low-income persons who are non or under-banked primarily for home improvement, incremental housing construction or the construction of a completed ‘starter’ home.

Why we invested
The Select Group of companies has a solid history of successful lending in Southern Africa.  The incremental housing model – where families build as resources become available – is an important strategy for housing finance in Africa, where long-term mortgage finance is neither available nor affodable for the vast majority of families on the continent. In Malawi, UN Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities 2006/2007 Report indicates that 90% of Malawians in urban areas live in slum conditions, which it describes as the “most visible manifestation of poverty.”  The majority of people live in informal settlements in self-built shacks.  It is expected that the program in Malawi will result in 45,000 total loans (including roll-overs) and a client base of 13,000 borrowers translating into thousands of new and improved housing conditions for low-income people and the improvement of the communities in which they live.

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