{"id":9684,"date":"2026-07-23T16:43:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameaglobal.org\/?p=9684"},"modified":"2026-07-23T17:03:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T15:03:18","slug":"yield-fund-uganda-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ameaglobal.org\/fr\/case-studies\/yield-fund-uganda-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Yield Fund Uganda Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Capital Alone Isn't Enough: What Eight Years of Blended Finance in Uganda Taught Us About Business Development Services<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For nearly a decade, most impact funds providing patient capital to African agri-SMEs have been managed from outside the continent. The Yield Uganda Investment Fund set out to test something different: could a locally based impact fund work, and could it attract local capital investors alongside international ones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in 2017 by the European Union in partnership with IFAD, and managed by Pearl Capital Partners (PCP), the Fund combined equity, semi-equity and debt with a structured Business Development Services (BDS) facility. Uganda's National Social Security Fund came in as a co-investor, growing the Fund from an initial \u20ac10m EU commitment to a \u20ac20m facility. Over its life, the Fund invested \u20ac19.6m across 15 Ugandan agri-SMEs spanning dairy, seed, horticulture, vanilla, animal feed and processed foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results, drawn from AMEA's Learning into Action case study series, offer some of the clearest evidence yet on how investment and BDS work together, and where the model still needs refining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BDS and capital need each other<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yield Fund was built on a hard-won premise. Two earlier funds had already shown that capital without BDS produced weak outcomes, and BDS without capital access failed to deliver either. So Yield Fund deliberately bundled the two, using BDS to de-risk investments and unlock the constraints holding enterprises back from growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It worked, but not evenly. The investee companies mobilised an additional UGX 52bn in finance and reached approximately 25,000 outgrower farmers, around a quarter of them women. Revenue and job growth varied widely across the portfolio, with five enterprises growing rapidly while others progressed more slowly, a pattern shaped as much by COVID-19 disruption and fuel price shocks as by the support itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one investee, the MD of Royal Milk Group, put it: \"The greatest achievement of the Yield Fund BDS program was not the completion of activities, but the creation of lasting capabilities that continue to drive growth, resilience, and impact across our business.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What the evidence shows<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A few findings stand out from the detailed evidence base:<\/p>\n\n\n\n