Nasira is an example of blended finance, bringing together public and private funding.
Nasira is a risk-sharing facility, meaning it takes a second-loss guarantee of up 95% of the losses on the underlying portfolio. It is funded by the European Commission and Dutch government fund MASSIF.
Nasira encourages banks to lend to people they would usually consider too risky, such as agriculture MSMEs, young, female, and migrant entrepreneurs. Nasira became effective under the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD) in 2019, aiming to support MSMEs in Africa and the EU Neighbourhood.
Over the past years, the program has been making good progress. With some valuable lessons learnt along the way, Nasira is getting close to reaching its target: leveraging a portfolio of €500 million of loans to underserves MSMEs by August 2024
In line with EFSD+, FMO will scale up Nasira in the global context. Geographically, the program will expand to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Turkey - next to the existing regions. Building on lessons learnt, the program will also venture into “new” sectors. NASIRA+ will also support rural /agriculture-MSME’s to stimulate local production and food security, and clean energy solutions.
In December 2022, the European Commission announced that it will provide Nasira with an additional €264 million guarantee in combination with Technical Assistance (amount TBD). We expect that in total, this top-up package will help to leverage €1.3 billion of loans to MSME’s globally.
The expansion of Nasira will contribute to the EU’s Global Gateway strategy and various current and future Team Europe Initiatives, like Investing in Young Businesses in Africa.
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If you want more information about Nasira, please send an email to: nasira@fmo.nl