How Does TerraFund for AFR100 Finance Land Accelerator Graduates?

The Land Accelerator provides training that prepares restoration enterprises to seek funding from TerraFund and other sources. Many of the recipients of funding in the first two cohorts of TerraFund first joined a Land Accelerator cohort. In short, graduating from the Land Accelerator greatly improves the likelihood of a restoration entrepreneur receiving a loan or equity investment from TerraFund for AFR100.

A Lasting Partnership

Through its support for the AFR100 Initiative, World Resources Institute operates several programs that support restoration entrepreneurs. 

The Land Accelerator trains entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, improve their pitching skills, and connect with mentors and their peers. However, over the years the program realized there were investment-worthy companies being overlooked for the debt and equity finance that they needed to scale.

In 2021, WRI and its partners One Tree Planted and Realize Impact created TerraFund for AFR100 to fill that gap. The initiative issued an open call for proposals for non-profit community organizations and for-profit businesses that restore Africa’s land, asking them to apply for $50,000 to $500,000 USD in finance. After a rigorous selection process, Realize Impact issued more than $3 million in low-interest loans to the first cohort of 20 entrepreneurs.

The Land Accelerator had trained most of these enterprises before they applied to TerraFund, increasing the quality of their funding applications. Organizations first uncovered by TerraFund then joined the Land Accelerator’s 2022 and 2023 cohorts to benefit from their specialized training.

In January 2024, TerraFund announced its second cohort of 14 entrepreneurs that operate in its target landscapes of Kenya’s Greater Rift Valley, the Ghana Cocoa Belt, and the Lake Kivu & Rusizi River Basin of Burundi, DRC, and Rwanda. The majority of the funded enterprises had also benefitted from Land Accelerator training.

A New Opportunity in 2024

Starting in 2024, TerraFund and the Land Accelerator share TerraMatch as their unified application and monitoring, reporting, and verification platform. Application data from both programs is housed in a common database associated with TerraMatch.

TerraFund is also opening a specific debt and equity funding window for invited graduates of the Land Accelerator Africa years 2018-2023, launching in March 2024. This fund is made possible by recycling funding repaid from loans made in 2021 and 2022 to the first cohort of 20 African restoration enterprises. TerraFund staff will train members of the program’s 2024 cohort on submitting successful applications for funding.

For more information about TerraFund for AFR100, visit www.africa.terramatch.org.