Our best wishes for 2021

The team of Investisseurs & Partenaires wishes you all the best for 2021... we hope it will be a more favorable year, both privately and professionally, after the difficult year of 2020. A review of the key moments of 2020 and our projects for 2021, with Jean-Michel Severino, CEO of Investisseurs & Partenaires.

See also: our first newsletter of 2021!

A word from Jean-Michel Severino, CEO of Investisseurs & Partenaires

The entire I&P team joins me in wishing you all the best for 2021. We hope that the new year will create a more favorable context, both for our private lives and our professional activities.

In 2020, I&P has focused on giving even greater impact and strength to its mission. We have been very active towards the companies we support. We have helped them deal with the deep consequences of the very severe sanitary and economic crisis. This crisis has not prevented us from continuing to invest in new businesses, in all the funds and vehicles that we manage or support: the entrepreneurial spirit of Africans has remained strong, and whenever circumstances made it possible, we have not hesitated to move forward with them. During the year 2020, we have also been able to actively deploy our support to smaller companies, particularly in the most fragile countries, or in riskier sectors.

The year 2021 appears to be another tough year, worldwide and on the African continent. More than ever, I&P embodies a tool that is particularly well suited to the challenges of our times. The purpose of impact investing is to create economic and human prosperity where markets don't work, where investors usually go because it's too difficult, too costly, too risky. Our role becomes even more important, both in supporting African entrepreneurs and in advocating for their cause in African public policy.

We see that the entrepreneurial dynamic stays strong, that our portfolio companies demonstrate great resilience, and that the opportunities to contribute in building a positive future for the continent through successful investments remain significant.

Persistence in the effort will therefore be the watchword for I&P, with a focus on the deployment of current funds across the three business lines of the I&P family. Acceleration activities (concessional loans and grants to very small businesses, support for national incubators and accelerator, etc.) should reach a new threshold. New IPDEV2 national partners are expected to emerge in Uganda and Mali. As for our expansion activities, we will seek to finalize the implementation of our major I&P Education and Employment project (IP2E), which aims at strengthening the link between education and the job market through the promotion of private companies providing vocational training, while pursuing the investments and exits of our funds I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs (IPAE1 and IPAE 2).

All this should enable us to contribute, always modestly, but more and even better, not only to a necessary economic recovery in Africa, but also to the resolution of some of the continent's major challenges such as employment, gender and climate change.