news - ARIA initiative receives prestigious Ecosystem Enabler Award

At the Annual AVCA Conference, the largest Africa-focused private capital convener globally, the ARIA initiative was awarded the prestigious ‘Ecosystem Enabler Award'.

ARIA stands for Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator and was established by British International Investment (BII) and FMO, with the aim to bring together investors to unlock investments and build investment ecosystems in frontier African markets. 

The award recognizes the pivotal role ARIA plays in advocating for private capital in Africa and driving impactful engagement across all levels of the ecosystem. This aligns perfectly with our objectives for market creation activities.

With the introduction of our 2030 Pioneer, Develop, Scale strategy, we introduced market creation as a new fly wheel to our investment process. Our goal is to address barriers that limit the growth of impactful business opportunities and projects. We aim to achieve this through market creation, making these projects and businesses 'bankable'. By doing so, we create more investment opportunities for development banks and other large-impact investors, enabling them to contribute to private sector development in markets and sectors they currently cannot reach

The ARIA initiative focuses on Sierra Leone, Liberia, the DRC, Ethiopia, and Benin and aims to challenge misperceptions about the lack of investment opportunities in these regions and to equip investors with market knowledge and resources to better serve them. Though still in its early stages, ARIA has already demonstrated a track record of delivering concrete results by changing perceptions, influencing strategies, facilitating increased investment, and brokering partnerships among ecosystem actors.

More information 
about ARIA
about Market Creation