Description
The benchmarking included a review of agribusiness strategies of 15 financial institutions, including MDBs, DFIs and commercial banks, against a list of 14 EBRD-identified sector trends (e.g. sustainable intensification, global food security, nutrition-sensitive investments).
As well as mapping the institutions’ stated focus areas for agribusiness investment against the 14 sector trends, Wellspring also analysed the alignment of agribusiness projects financed by MDBs and DFIs between 2017 and 2023 with the 14 trends.
The sample only included agribusiness projects which were publicly documented on MDB and DFI websites (total of 1728 projects), therefore our analysis may not have reflected the entirety of their portfolios over this period. We were also unable to conduct the analysis for institutions which do not publish agribusiness projects on public platforms (five out of the 15 institutions).
Our strategic benchmarking exercise informed EBRD’s board on the stated priorities and focus areas of other MDBs and DFIs investing in agribusiness.
Our analysis of actual investments against stated priorities provided additional insight into how institutions are spending their agribusiness-related funds, and more accurately captured their overall agribusiness portfolios.
Wellspring delivered two presentations to EBRDs agribusiness team and senior management, presenting an overview of the benchmarking exercise and highlighting some key findings.
We also prepared a 34-page benchmarking report including an overview sector of the benchmarking exercise (by strategic approaches and agribusiness portfolio investments), as well as a deep-dive section in which we presented findings from our analysis by number of projects, volume of investments, geography and investment type of each investment with components related to each trend.
This research will be used internally by EBRD to inform the strategic priorities for the next agribusiness strategy.
Team members
