GREEN FINANCE STRATEGIES IN AFRICA: A Focus on Capital Market-Based Impact Investments in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Ghana

This chapter examines emerging green finance strategies in an African context. To illustrate the operationalization of these, we present three in-depth case studies of capital market-based impact investing funds in Ghana, drawing on relevant institutional and stakeholder theories. Our analysis suggests that explicit finance-first institutional logic is dominant in the African context, investing in green (renewables) activities. In addition, emerging evidence of impact investment funds are taking on transition elements in green finance, requiring the greening of existing brown industries. In view of the struggle to manage the tensions emerging from institutional logics, some fund managers have adopted hybrid logics as a potential solution to the challenge of merging the logics by some of these fund managers. Explicit strategies are found in funds that target renewables, climate change, adaptation, and resilience related to Goal 13 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts). Implicit investment strategies are found in funds in which green credentials constitute one of many variables within broader impact metrics. The concluding discussion highlights important implications for green finance research policy and practice implications for policy and practitioners of environment-focused impact investment opportunities.