Capital Musings

A story of friendship, resilience, capital, and Southern ownership. Our host, Edoardo Tancioni, interviews Washikala Malango, CO-Founder, and CEO of Altech Group (ww.altech-drc.com), who shares how to turn a problem you have experienced first-hand into an opportunity for your local community and your people.

This week, our new host, Edoardo Tancioni, meets Richard Zulu, Founding Partner and Lead at Outbox. Richard shares his journey towards investing in #youth, and his passion towards building a sense of community and growing local talent to co-identify opportunities for sustainable change in LDCs.

This week we meet Rose Twine, Director of EcoGroup Uganda, diving into the multifaceted dimensions of renewable energy, and how important affordability, community engagement, and policy environments are to accessing clean energy for all.

In this episode, Matthew Roberts-Davies, COO & Co-Founder (Thundafund Africa) shares his experience working in emerging markets with Thundafund.com. He defines loyalty, personalization, capital, and partnerships as unique enablers to innovation, and talks about the importance of fully engaging vibrant and youthful populations to bring new ideas to life.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). from their flagship series: "Blended Finance in the LDCs, 2020: Supporting a Resilient Covid-19 Recovery." The third edition of the Blended Finance in the LDCs report series acknowledges that least developed countries are not able to harness the full potential of blended finance, defined in the report as the strategic use of development finance to mobilise commercial finance towards the SDGs, with a focus on unlocking investment that the private sector would not have done on its own. 

We had the opportunity to hear from three of the authors—UNCDF's Laura Sennett, and the OECD's Valentina Bellesi and Faty Dembele—who discussed the findings of the report as well as its recommendations for how LDCs can benefit from blended finance to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and support economic recovery in the post-pandemic period.

Amb. Robert Rae, Canada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, discusses his distinguished career in domestic politics, why it’s important for civil society to participate in UN discussions, and his dream goal for the UN. 

In the context of COP26, today’s podcast is dedicated to the least developed countries. By now, the year 2021 has seen a familiar pattern of destructive impacts stemming from climate change, leading to increasingly devastating extreme weather events including fires, cyclones, hurricanes, floods, and droughts across the world. 

Taffere Tesfachew, a career UN official, explains how the category of Least Developed Countries was created and how the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) works to support the group.

Jodi Smith, a film industry vet who now works to source and grow investments with positive environmental impact in Fiji, talks about her path from linguistics to film to business development.

Paul Klein, Founder and President of Impakt, explains how his background as a guitarist and arts administrator led to a career in social entrepreneurship and impact consulting, helping corporations and businesses try to solve some of society’s biggest problems. His new book, “Change for Good,” shares lessons for aspiring social entrepreneurs and change agents.

Esala Masitabua, Deputy Governor of Fiji’s Reserve Bank, speaks about blue and green bonds, the national financial inclusion plan, parametric insurance, and the factors that have made Fiji a regional and global leader in innovative climate finance.