Multinational - SPARK+ Africa Fund: A Clean Cooking Ecosystem Fund - Project Summary Note

The Spark+ Africa Fund (the “Fund”) is an impact Investment fund being established by the Clean Cooking Alliance (the “Alliance”), a global organization working to build an inclusive clean cooking industry at scale, and Enabling Qapital (“EQ”), an asset management and advisory company, to invest in companies throughout the clean cooking sector and value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa (“SSA”). The Fund’s focus includes companies that manufacture and distribute clean cooking solutions such as biomass stoves, advanced biomass fuels, LPG and ethanol, and biogas systems; and distributors and consumer finance providers such as off-grid solar companies and microfinance institutions (“MFIs”) that will extend their services to clean cooking products. The Fund will focus on markets in East and West Africa but with the ability to opportunistically target companies in other markets within SSA. The Fund will invest in debt instruments (~70%) as well as equity and quasi-equity instruments (~30%), addressing the growth capital gap of cooking energy-focused SMEs. While the Fund will retain flexibility to offer commitments of USD 1-5 million to investees, the average ticket size per investee is likely to be USD 2-3 million. In addition, a technical assistance (“TA”) facility, hosted by the Alliance, will support both the development of the Fund’s future pipeline and acceleration of growth within the portfolio (on a post-investment basis), as well as improve the policy environment and create consumer demand.