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What a difference it makes to meet your colleagues in person and freely exchange ideas without looking at a screen. To be in the same time zone. Normally, during our weekly meetings, our Brazilian colleagues have barely woken up, while it’s almost dinner time for our Asian colleagues.

It was great to finally meet our regional leads for Asia, Stuart Beavis, and Latin America, Fabricio de Campos. And Marcel Dupuis, our senior advisor from Paris.

The one-day meeting had a packed schedule fully centered on getting ready for the next growth phase of the fund. Three years into the fund, we have built up a strong pipeline and are ready to graduate some of our projects to the Land Use Facility of the Fund. We are also about to submit a significant fundraising proposal the EU’s EFSD+ led by FMO.

That is why we were very happy that Aart Mulder, the DFCD fund manager, joined our discussions all day. His colleagues Rik Recourt and Iwan Meister took part in the afternoon program to explain the EU funding proposal and facilitate the discussion with Hivos-Triodos Fund respectively.

Graduation

While our partner in the origination facility SNV will announce the first project graduation this month, we hope to present 4 to 5 projects to the Land Use Facility in the next few months. Two projects in Africa are ready for ‘handover’, two in Asia are almost there, while the recently announced project in Brazil should also be presented before the end of the year. The first quarter of next year looks promising too.

EU Funding proposal

The DFCD is submitting a proposal to the EU’s EFSD+ fund for a guarantee that should grow our fund’s investment capital significantly. Through the guarantee, the DFCD can attract a large loan of FMO at a rather favourable interest rate.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs is supporting our bid and we’re exploring how we can submit a proposal to the ministry to replenish the Origination Facility.

Collaboration with the Hivos-Triodos Fund

The DFCD and Hivos-Triodos fund have been exploring collaboration for a while as both funds are rather close when it comes to the kind of sectors and companies they’re investing in. Big difference is that the Triodos fund can invest in smaller companies. Some of our projects are still too small for the DFCD investment facilities. A potential investment by another investor could be part of their growth path towards a DFCD investment later.

During the meeting we presented three projects to the Triodos team to learn how they’re looking at projects and whether they would match with their eligibility criteria. This led to some interesting discussion and sparked immediate interest in at least one project in Ecuador.

We agreed that we would start exchanging projects on a case-by-case basis, while FMO and Triodos are working on a formal collaboration.