The Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, are pleased to present the 2022 edition of the FT/IFC Transformational Business Awards, the leading global initiative that highlights and promotes ground-breaking, long-term private sector solutions to major development challenges. This latest programme marks 17 years of collaboration between the FT and IFC on awards that have had a substantial impact on the way financial and non-financial organisations approach sustainable investment.

Developing countries face multiple social, humanitarian, environmental and structural economic challenges amid a continuing pandemic, renewed efforts to address climate change, and the impact of conflict on fragile nations, communities, infrastructure and supply chains. To reflect this, the 2022 awards feature three core categories: Transformational Human Capital Solutions will group entries in healthcare and education, underlining the urgent need to protect and invest in people; Transformational Climate Change Solutions will focus on initiatives in key productive sectors, such as infrastructure, supply chains and agriculture, that address the climate emergency; and Transformational Finance Solutions will highlight the most innovative impact funds that are helping to scale up promising opportunities.

Gender-Lens Finance underlines the continuing need to counter discrimination against women and girls and ensure they can contribute to broader economic development. New Frontiers is designed to promote exciting ideas that may not meet the eligibility criteria for the core categories but have the potential, with additional funding, to have a transformational impact on the challenges they are targeting. 

The aim across all categories is to recognise and showcase innovation, impact, replicability, financial viability and sustainability. The judging panel will look at how organisations are harnessing disruptive technologies and business models to achieve impact and scale. Entries are particularly welcome from organisations with initiatives that may provide solutions in fragile and conflict-affected states.

Only initiatives that have been implemented since 2016 will be eligible. Entries to the human capital, climate change and gender-lens categories must have annual revenues of at least US$3 million or have raised capital of at least US$5 million, to be eligible. For the impact investing category, the minimum fund size is $100 million.

The winner in each category will be announced at a special awards ceremony that will also include the FT/IFC Transformational Business Conference, a major gathering of thought leaders who will explore and debate the issues generated by the Awards.

Transformational Climate 
Change Solutions 

Many developing economies lack the capacity and finance to accelerate the energy transition and generally mitigate the effects of climate change. This award recognises initiatives that leverage private sector expertise and finance and new technologies to ensure climate-smart solutions and environmental resilience across key productive sectors, including energy supply, urban and rural infrastructure, mobility networks, green buildings, waste management, manufacturing, logistics, raw material extraction, supply chain management and circularity, agriculture and food and water security.

Transformational Human 
Capital Solutions

The impact of the pandemic on communities in developing economies has underlined the urgent need to improve not only health outcomes but also the overall capacity of people to contribute to economic development. This award recognises tech-enabled, scalable solutions that boost human capital by improving on the one hand the access, affordability and quality of healthcare, and on the other, the acquisition of education and skills that help young people and current workforces for the demands of increasingly digital economies. Initiatives that address the digital divide will also be considered in this category.

Transformational Finance Solutions – Impact Investing

This award recognises impact investing funds that demonstrate innovation, scalability and measured impact in their operations. It is open to funds that can demonstrate concrete impact results and financial sustainability achieved through its investments. Special attention will be given to innovation in the fund manager’s approach to identifying, nurturing and scaling-up impact opportunities; the expected and realised impact results and financial returns; and the quality of impact management, measurement and reporting, taking as reference recognised industry standards.

Transformational Finance Solutions – Gender-Lens Finance

Investing for financial return through the lens of female empowerment is a proven and growing asset class that can help counter continued discrimination against women and girls and ensure they can contribute to, and be included in, broader economic development. Scalable, gender-focused solutions in areas such as MSME finance, fintech and digital financial services, financial education, insurance and risk mitigation, housing, asset and property ownership, startup capital, and other key areas, can make a big difference. This award recognises innovative, high-quality financial solutions for women and women-led businesses in developing economies, with special attention given to sectors and segments in which such businesses are traditionally underserved.

Transformational Solutions – New Frontiers

 This special category is designed to highlight exciting new deep tech ideas that may not meet the eligibility criteria for the core categories but have the potential, with additional funding, to have a transformational impact on the challenges they are targeting. Entries should be aligned with the themes of the four core categories.

Overall Award: Excellence in Transformational Business

This prize will be awarded to the initiative that in the opinion of the judging panel stands apart among the winners of all categories for its level of innovation, impact, replicability, financial viability and sustainability in the context of a developing economy.

Special Award: Pioneer in Transformational Impact 
WINNER: LeapFrog Investments - Asia, Africa

LeapFrog invests in high-growth healthcare and financial services companies that provide products and services to low-income consumers across Africa and Asia. Companies LeapFrog has helped build include Goodlife, the largest healthcare provider in East Africa; ARM Pensions, the largest independent pension provider in Nigeria, and BIMA, the largest mobile micro-insurer in the world. LeapFrog companies reach 221 million people across 35 countries, growing on average 26% a year and generating over $2 billion in annual revenue. In the past year alone, they have paid out $533 million in insurance claims and $289 million in pensions to low-income people, disbursed $16.4 billion in loans and provided 23 million high quality pharmaceutical products.

Transformational Finance Solutions –
Impact Investing
WINNER: Camco-managed Renewable Energy Performance Platform (REPP) - Sub-Saharan Africa

The Renewable Energy Performance Platform (REPP) – managed by Camco Clean Energy -- aims to create a self-sustaining market for investment in small-scale renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. REPP ensures risk-adjusted returns by creating a high volume of projects and adapting recognisable financing mechanisms to unfamiliar country and asset class contexts. Its innovative design allows it to take higher risks than other climate funds, enabling investment in innovative forms of energy in countries traditionally seen as unrewarding. To date, REPP has created 31 high-risk deals, crowded $113 million of private investment into de-risked projects, reduced CO2 emissions by 32,000 tonnes, and provided electricity to 700,000 people across 16 countries.

Transformational Climate Change and Technology Solutions
WINNER: KOKO bioethanol cooking fuel 
ATM network - Kenya

Most homes in sub-Saharan Africa rely on charcoal for cooking. KOKO Networks’ solution reduces carbon emissions while protecting Africa's forests. KOKO's low-cost two-burner stove runs on liquid bioethanol, a by-product of the local sugar industry. In local shops, 700 KOKO ATMs dispense fuel through cashless transactions into ‘Smart Canisters’ that come with the stove. This zero-emissions solution is 50% cheaper than charcoal. 230,000 Nairobi households have switched to cooking with KOKO since late 2019, saving 5 tonnes of CO2 emissions per household per year. By 2025, KOKO expects to serve 2 million households.

Transformational Finance Solutions –
Gender-lens Finance
WINNER: EcoEnterprises gender-smart venture fund for nature (EcoEnterprises Fund III) - Latin America

The initial EcoEnterprises Fund in 1998 was the first female-owned and led impact fund. Its third fund builds on its successful approach of focusing on women-led solutions to nature conservation and biodiversity challenges, working directly with investee companies in underprivileged communities in the Amazon and other areas of Latin America, in sectors such as regenerative agriculture, alternative forest products, circular economy and other emerging opportunities. The fund, invested by 33 private and institutional shareholders, has already provided nearly $60 million in capital, which has been committed by EcoEntreprises under the 2X Challenge, a broad initiative launched by DFIs in the G7 countries to raise billions of dollars for gender-lens investment.

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