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The Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) has secured an additional $90 million in committed capital to expand its work backing climate-resilient agribusinesses across Africa. The fresh capital builds on ARAF’s work since its 2020 launch as the world’s first equity fund built specifically to strengthen the climate resilience of smallholder farmers.
The new funding comes from a mix of returning and new backers. Green Climate Fund, FMO, and Proparco, which have backed ARAF since it launched, have renewed their commitments to the fund, and they are now joined by new investors Swedfund, BIO, and FASA, along with a family office investor. Together, they are underwriting ARAF’s next phase of growth, which will extend the fund’s reach beyond its existing footprint in East and West Africa into North Africa for the first time.
“Climate change is a fact of life, and climate resilience for farmers is the difference between a good season and the risk of losing everything,” said Tamer El-Raghy, Managing Director of ARAF. “This newly committed capital allows us to continue supporting climate resilience for farmers, while seeking to provide financial returns for our investors as we expand beyond East and West Africa into North Africa, where millions of farmers are affected by climate change.”
ARAF is an impact fund managed by Acumen Capital Partners, a wholly owned subsidiary of Acumen, that backs fast-growing food and agribusinesses whose models help African smallholder farmers adapt to a changing climate. Smallholder farmers grow close to 80% of Africa’s food supply, yet the sector remains exposed to drought, flooding, and increasingly erratic rainfall, with limited access to finance, inputs, agronomic support, and markets leaving farmers with few ways to absorb such shocks.
When a harvest fails, the effects extend well past a single farmer’s income to strain regional food systems more broadly. ARAF was designed to close that gap by backing scalable companies whose products and services help farmers adapt.
ARAF’s existing portfolio has already reached more than 3 million smallholder farmers through 12 portfolio companies, with more than 80% of those farmers reporting gains in income and crop yield as a result of the fund’s investments. Building on that record, ARAF is now targeting direct impact for at least four million additional farmers as it enters its next chapter.
“ARAF proved that resilience is investable, not theoretical,” said Carsten Stendevad, President and Chief Investment Officer of Acumen. “We’re bringing more blended capital and more partners to the table to help smallholder farmers across Africa adapt to a changing climate. This is the kind of capital the moment demands.”
Catherin Koffman, GCF’s Director of the Africa Region, said the partnership shows how blended finance can draw private capital into climate-resilient agriculture, strengthening both agribusinesses and the supply chains that farmers depend on. With GCF now committing more capital to help ARAF widen its reach, the fund’s next phase will test whether that model can scale fast enough to keep pace with the climate risks facing millions of farmers across the continent.
