Creating a Rewilding Africa Policy Brief framework for innovating on Social Impact Bonds as a source for funding dual outcome SDG social enterprises in Africa

Rewilding Africa CIC (RWA) approach involves building a multi-land use, multiple revenue stream conservation economy that differs from the traditional charity-funded conservation projects. This is quite different from traditional practices and involves several stakeholder groups (investors, implementors, evaluators, and payers). A key challenge they have is communicating how this can work so that they can get investment critical so that they can continue developing a prototype.

The key output of this project is to create an evidence-based Policy Briefing for RWA using the data already collected to articulate the challenges, complex stakeholder groups and benefits of their approach. RWA can use this policy briefing to make media announcements and raise their profile by creating awareness of and importance of developing new solutions to old problems that make a positive impact on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) they are addressing. RWA often presents at conferences, and they can use this to facilitate discussions towards formulating a theory of change.

The analysis of the interviews and workshop data already done in this project will be used to support a future Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant application for RWA to develop a new funding model that innovates upon Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) to overcome the funding gap challenges that RWA and other similar SDG projects often face.

Rewilding Africa CIC (RWA), a Community Interest Company registered in the UK and working in South Africa, is proposing a new approach towards building a conservation economy that differs from the traditional charity-funded conservation projects, by including local communities. The purpose of this impact grant application is to use a series of interviews and two workshops conducted with the CEO of RWA to develop an evidence-based policy briefing that the organisation can use to communicate their proposed funding framework to their complex stakeholder landscape.