GAIN Partners with Root Capital to Build Global Markets for Nutrition

Brian Milder

Root Capital is a nonprofit social investment fund that provides capital, delivers financial training, and strengthens market connections for small and growing businesses in rural areas of Africa and Latin America. Since its launch in 1999, it has delivered over US$ 300 million in credit to 320 small and growing businesses representing over 350,000 rural households in Africa and Latin America. GAIN caught up with Brian Milder, Root Capital’s Vice President of Strategy and Innovation to learn more about the partnership and its goals.

Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN): Why are you partnering with GAIN?
Brian Milder (BM): Both institutions recognize the need to address market failures that prevent nutritious food products from getting to the people who need them the most. 

GAIN: Is malnutrition a new space for you?
BM: Historically, most of our loans have been to associations of small-scale farmers and private enterprises that export crops like coffee and cocoa to North America and Europe. These loans have increased incomes and improved livelihoods for rural producers. With GAIN, we are looking to identify companies in Africa and Latin America that have the potential to manufacture and deliver nutritious foods to undernourished populations at the local level. Our impact with these loans will go beyond the farmers and workers employed by our clients to reach consumers who will benefit from access to these nutritious products.  

GAIN: How are Root Capital and GAIN collaborating to fight global malnutrition?
BM:  An emerging focus of our work is lending to advance food security and nutrition. GAIN has invested in these efforts, along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, General Mills, Lundin for Africa, and the Rockefeller Foundation. GAIN’s investment 1) supports our research in identifying companies in Africa and Latin America that increase the availability of value-added nutritious foods for vulnerable populations; and 2) provides the loan capital we need to finance these businesses.

GAIN: What does your role as Vice President of Strategy and Innovation involve? 
BM: I lead our work to research and enter new industries where we can expand our impact. For example, how can we take a lending model that’s been used to finance a cooperative exporting fair trade organic coffee to Starbucks and adapt it to finance a food processor selling to the local market? And then beyond simply doing a single high-impact pilot loan, how can we learn from and replicate this model to achieve scale? My role also involves sharing the learning from our impact assessment with the wider development community so we can advance the field collectively and shaping our organizational strategy with my colleagues. 

GAIN: What motivates you to fight malnutrition?
BM: For me, poverty is intolerable. Malnutrition is especially unacceptable as it disproportionately affects infants and children, stunting their growth and limiting their opportunities. Even more frustrating is that we know what’s possible with effective public policies and well-functioning private markets — in many cases, the solutions aren’t mysterious but things fall apart in the implementation. What initially drew me to Root Capital five years ago and continues to drive my work today is the opportunity to leverage partnerships with organizations like GAIN and extend much-needed capital to businesses that advance nutrition in a cost-effective, sustainable way.

GAIN: What led you to work in a developing country context in the social business sector?
BM: After doing community development work in the U.S. and Latin America, I went to business school because I wanted to leverage market approaches to achieve social change – and that led me to Root Capital. Along this path, I’ve sought to have the greatest impact on addressing poverty and contributing to long-term economic development, environmental sustainability, and community cohesion. Ultimately, I am motivated to do work that will realize these aspirations. 

Reporting by Karie Atkinson, GAIN