{"id":9354,"date":"2026-04-27T21:41:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.openvaluefoundation.org\/?p=9354"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:42:00","slug":"blog-post-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/2026\/04\/27\/blog-post-79\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog post 79"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not accustomed to writing this type of document, so I hope you will excuse any errors you may notice. My writing style is clearly more focused on technical and numerical reports regarding the different business opportunities we analyse daily in Global Social Impact Investments<\/a> (GSII), the management company that manages the global social impact investment fund (GSIF), which works alongside the Open Value Foundation with the aim of fostering and promoting impact investment in Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our GSIF fund focuses geographically on sub-Saharan Africa, and more specifically on the eastern part of this vast region. Our target investments are in countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia, to name but a few in that region. In this geographical area, almost 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this first piece, I wanted to talk to you about Let's go<\/a>, the first investment we made in the GSIF fund, specifically in Uganda, an investment that remains active and which, in a way, reflects how we understand impact investing at GSII, and with which we are deeply satisfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give you an idea, Uganda is a country with a population slightly smaller than that of Spain (almost 43 million people), covering an area slightly less than half the size of Spain. Its per capita income stands at $643 (2018), almost 48 times less than that of Spain. It is therefore one of the poorest countries in the world. 70% of the population is under 25 years of age, and the high rate of early school leaving in the country leads to extremely high job insecurity: unemployment and precarious working conditions that prevent its inhabitants from achieving financial independence and hinder improvements in their living standards. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Tugende?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the first company GSIF invested in. At the end of 2018, we granted the company a first loan of $500,000. Today, that figure has increased to $750,000, and the forecast is that this amount will increase in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let's go<\/a>\u00a0It offers motorcycle leasing financial services to its clients. To better understand the service the company offers, it is sufficient to state that driving a motorcycle taxi (called boda-boda in Uganda) is one of the best employment opportunities for young people in urban environments with limited educational resources who are entering the labour market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this profession, average earnings can reach around $10 per day and only require a motorcycle. Under normal conditions, the vast majority of Uganda's over 400,000 boda-boda drivers neither have the resources nor access to funding that would allow them to acquire a motorcycle. In these circumstances, the only alternative to take up this employment is to rent the motorcycle from another owner. Those who opt for this method earn little and have little capacity for saving because rental costs are very high, meaning they can never afford social mobility, let alone significantly improve their living conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given this situation, Tugende provides financing for customers to acquire their motorcycle who cannot access financing through other means. From a risk perspective, the model may seem very high-risk, but reality shows that the default rate is actually low. To provide you with numerical data and illustrate the business model this Ugandan company offers its customers, the average cost of a motorcycle in Uganda is around 925 dollars. Tugende includes additional benefits for drivers such as a GPS tracking unit, insurance, motorcycle protection, and a driving licence, which amount to an additional 175 dollars, bringing the final cost of the package to around 1,100 dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the product has been delivered, the end customer has a period of 20 months to repay the aforementioned amount plus the financial interest applied by Tugende. The payments are distributed in monthly instalments, and once this period has elapsed and all instalments have been paid, the customer becomes the owner of the motorcycle. From that point onwards, they retain all the income it generates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the social impacts of our investment, I would highlight the improvement of customer conditions, as each lease agreement creates a new job, which is also stable. Incomes practically double compared to other existing alternatives for carrying out this trade, and the latter enables these individuals and their families to invest in acquiring or improving their housing, or in the health and education of their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, Tugende improves mobility in a country with complicated public transport, especially for women and those with limited financial resources, by offering road safety training to drivers, equipping them with safety gear and insurance for accidents, illness, disability, or death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, there are environmental improvements from the use of new or practically new motorcycles, compared to an old and informally maintained motorcycle fleet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we measure the social impact and track the company?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ours loan together with others<\/a> allows Tugende to increase the number of leasing operations and therefore reach a greater number of beneficiaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From GSII, we periodically monitor the progress of a series of indicators that we consider key. The monitoring model we apply is to track social impact through four or five indicators that are relatively easy for our investees to measure. These parameters are systematically compared and analysed against those received in previous periods, to draw conclusions that contribute to their improvement, in a constructive dialogue with the investee company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following table and charts very concisely show the monitoring we do of these indicators:

\"Captura_de_pantalla_2020-12-22_a_las_18.50.47.png\"

Finally, within the internal analyses we conduct at GSII, we evaluate the contribution of our investments to the social impact of the societies in which we invest. In the case of Tugende, the latest analysis carried out is summarised in the following table:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Blog_Tugende_3.png\"\/<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No soy habitual en la redacci\u00f3n de este tipo de escritos por lo que espero sep\u00e1is disculpar los errores que observ\u00e9is. Mi estilo de redacci\u00f3n est\u00e1 claramente m\u00e1s enfocado a informes t\u00e9cnicos y num\u00e9ricos sobre las distintas oportunidades de negocio que analizamos a diario en Global Social Impact Investments (GSII), la sociedad gestora que gestiona el fondo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9357,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354\/revisions\/9357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}