Development Finance and Impact Fund Research Support

Organizational Context

timbuktoo Africa Innovation Foundation, anchored in UNDP's Regional Bureau for Africa, supports African founders to start, grow, and scale. Its mission is to target 100,000 startups, 1,000 scaled companies, and mobilize USD 1 billion in catalytic and commercial capital for African innovation. The Foundation's investment architecture uses a four-layer blended capital stack, led by the Chief Investment Officer, who builds capital mobilization pipelines with DFIs, impact funds, and institutional investors globally.

Job Purpose

The assignment's purpose is to create a structured, current, and well-researched database of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and impact funds with active mandates to invest in African startups and innovation ecosystems. This database is a foundational tool for the timbuktoo Africa Innovation Foundation, which aims to support African founders and mobilize USD 1 billion in capital. The Chief Investment Officer's team relies on this database to identify appropriate institutional investors for deals, understand mandate constraints and deployment criteria, and map the institutional investor landscape against timbuktoo's company pipeline. This critical input is needed for the CIO's capital mobilization strategy for 2026, directly contributing to the Foundation's mission of scaling African innovation.

Responsibilities

The online volunteer will research and compile a structured database of development finance institutions (DFIs) and impact funds with active investment or co-investment mandates in African startup and innovation ecosystems. This involves using publicly available sources such as institution websites, annual reports, fund prospectuses, investment policy statements, OECD DAC statistics, and news coverage. The volunteer will profile a minimum of 40 institutions, documenting key fields in a structured spreadsheet. These institutions will span multilateral DFIs (e.g., IFC, AfDB), regional and national DFIs with African mandates (e.g., Afreximbank, DBSA), impact funds and blended finance vehicles deploying into African startups (e.g., those with SDG, gender-lens, or climate-innovation mandates), and sovereign wealth funds/foundations with publicly stated African innovation investment programmes. The volunteer must aim for at least 8 entries in each of the multilateral DFI, regional DFI, and impact fund categories, ensuring all entries are based on verifiable public sources with recorded source URLs. The final deliverable is a completed, structured spreadsheet profiling a minimum of 40 institutions, formatted to the Foundation's template, within 8 weeks.

Work Experience

Required experience includes a background in finance, economics, international development, or a related field, sufficient to understand investment mandate terminology, fund structures, and DFI operating models. Prior exposure to impact investing, blended finance, or development finance institutions through study, work, or research is strongly preferred. Familiarity with the African investment or development finance landscape is a significant advantage.

Skills

Strong research skills are required, including the ability to find, verify, and synthesize information from institutional annual reports, fund prospectuses, and policy documents. Proficiency in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for structured data entry across multiple fields is essential. Attention to detail is crucial for accurately recording mandate criteria, ticket sizes, instrument types, and source references. Fluent English is required, and working knowledge of French is desirable.

Explore related opportunities