Founded in the Netherlands in 1965, SNV is a global development partner with a long-term, locally embedded presence across countries in Asia and Africa. Working across agri-food, energy and water systems, SNV strengthens capacities and catalyzes partnerships with governments, businesses, civil society and communities to enable more inclusive, resilient and sustainable development.

We spoke with Simon O'Connell, CEO of SNV about how they engage in blended finance, gaps and opportunities they see in the blended finance space, the impact of global diminishment in ODA in SNV’s work, and more.

How does SNV engage in blended finance?

We see blended finance as a means to accelerate sustainable development outcomes by helping promising businesses and financial institutions become investment-ready, rather than as an end in itself. Our role is to bridge the gap between development and investment by combining technical expertise, a long-term local presence, and trusted partnerships with governments, businesses, investors, and financial institutions. We work across the investment continuum, from strengthening entrepreneurship ecosystems and enabling environments to providing origination, technical assistance, and de-risking support that helps mobilize private capital into frontier markets. In doing so, we connect local knowledge with global investment networks to help address the “missing middle”, where many high-impact enterprises struggle to access appropriate finance.

Can you describe a blended finance transaction that SNV has been involved in? In what capacity did you participate?

A good example of our work in blended finance is our role in the €440 million Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD) which is focused on climate resilience investments in agri-food, forestry, nature,and water in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Through its wider investment facilities and the capital they have mobilised, approximately €1.3 billion is currently managed across the DFCD facilities. In DFCD, SNV together with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-NL) manages the €70 million Origination Facility, working closely with blended finance investment facilities managed by Dutch entrepreneurial development bank (FMO) and Climate Fund Managers. The Origination Facility provides origination and pre-investment technical assistance services to companies with the potential to deliver measurable climate adaptation, mitigation and development outcomes, helping strengthen both their investment readiness and climate impact case. Once investment-ready and de-risked, projects can progress to DFCD investors as well as other associated investors.

An example of a project supported through the DFCD Origination Facility is Phuc Sinh, one of Vietnam’s leading coffee companies, which was seeking investment to expand its climate-resilient, sustainable coffee-processing operations. SNV worked with the company over a two-year period to strengthen its investment readiness by improving its environmental, social and governance (ESG) systems, refining its business model, conducting technical studies, and reducing investment risks.

Throughout this process, we also helped align the company’s commercial ambitions with investor requirements, ensuring that both the financial and development cases for the investment were robust.

This support helped unlock a $15 million investment from FMO, enabling Phuc Sinh to build a new processing facility while strengthening more resilient, traceable, and sustainable coffee value chains. The investment is expected to lead to around 3,300 hectares of farmland being sustainably managed and benefit more than 10,000 people.

How does SNV measure the impact of its blended finance activities?

We measure success through both the finance we help mobilize and de-risk and the long-term development outcomes that investment creates. Financial indicators include the number of businesses reaching investment readiness, private capital mobilized, and progression along the investment continuum.

These investments are then assessed against development outcomes, which vary by investment but typically include improvements in climate resilience, food security, livelihoods, biodiversity, job creation, and inclusive economic growth. We also recognize that measuring adaptation and resilience remains a significant challenge in blended finance, and we continue to strengthen approaches that better capture these outcomes alongside financial performance.

Alongside this, we are increasingly focused on demonstrating how catalytic grants and technical assistance create lasting systemic change by strengthening businesses and markets rather than delivering only short-term project outputs.

For example, through the DFCD Origination Facility, SNV has supported 30 enterprises across 11 countries, with 14 projects progressing to the investment stage. The facility has mobilized €81 million in private finance to date, with a further €124 million projected. Across the wider DFCD, the projected mobilization ratio is approximately €10 in private investment for every €1 of grant and technical assistance support.

Has the global diminishment in Official development assistance (ODA) affected SNV’s work? How?

The changing ODA landscape has reinforced the need to use scarce public resources both more intentionally and catalytically, ensuring that grants are deployed where they can have the greatest impact.

In many contexts, we see grants can be used to help prepare businesses and institutions for investment by reducing risk, strengthening capacity, and unlocking much larger flows of private finance. The diminishment of ODA is, in general, a real concern given the scale of global challenges, and whilst SNV continues to manage a robust and diverse portfolio of projects and initiatives, we are not immune to the decline in overall funding across the development sector. At the same time, shrinking aid budgets have highlighted that no single organization or funding source can bridge the financing gap alone. Stronger partnerships across governments, development organizations, investors, financial institutions, and philanthropy are becoming more important than ever.

This thinking underpins SNV's work on the impact capital continuum, which aims to create stronger connections between grants, technical assistance, concessional finance, and commercial investment, rather than treating them as separate financing instruments.

Ultimately, we believe the opportunity is not simply to mobilize more capital, but to build a more connected financing ecosystem that enables promising businesses to progress from innovation to scale without falling into the “missing middle.”

As a non-profit in the blended finance space, what are some interesting or unexpected challenges SNV has had to navigate?

One of the biggest challenges is continuity. Too often, businesses receive valuable grant support but struggle to access the next stage of finance because different funding instruments and programmes operate in isolation.

Another challenge is working with partners that have very different objectives, timelines, and risk appetites, which means that building trust, relationships, and alignment is often just as important as structuring the transaction itself.

Donors and philanthropic foundations often seek systems change, whereas investors are much more focused on individual transactions. However, both can often be achieved at the same time with targeted effort. As a non-profit, our role is often to act as a trusted intermediary, connecting commercial investment with meaningful development outcomes.

In addition, in frontier markets, investment readiness frequently depends on strengthening governance, ESG systems, and business fundamentals before financing can proceed. Measuring outcomes such as resilience, adaptation, and inclusion can also be more challenging than measuring financial performance alone, despite their importance to long-term impact.

As an organization working to transform agri-food, energy, and water systems, what gaps or opportunities do you see in the blended finance space?

We believe the greatest opportunity lies in creating stronger pathways across the investment continuum so that promising businesses can move more efficiently from innovation to commercial scale.

It is often argued that even in frontier markets, there is enough capital, but not enough investable opportunity. Our experience, however, demonstrates that there is significant unmet investable business potential. Realizing this potential, however, requires origination, technical assistance, as well as handholding and coaching. The demand for such services is much higher than the current supply, meaning significant investment potential remains unrealized.

We also see considerable potential in working more closely with local financial institutions, which are well placed to serve underserved businesses but often need additional risk-sharing mechanisms and technical support.

Similarly, stronger collaboration between development organizations, governments, and investors could reduce duplication and make blended finance more efficient and scalable. Convergence and other sector-support providers can help by making blended finance more transparent, sharing best practices, setting standards, and promoting benchmarking.

We believe blended finance has an important role to play in breaking down the silos between sectors such as agri-food, energy, and water. Many of the most pressing challenges are interconnected, and financing approaches that work across sectors have the potential to deliver greater impact and long-term value.

Finally, there is growing recognition that blended finance should better value outcomes such as climate adaptation, biodiversity, and resilience alongside more established financial and climate metrics, not just for moral reasons, but also because of the strong economic and business case for doing so.

How do you see SNV’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?

We expect our blended finance work to become increasingly central to our overall work, with a stronger focus on building connections across the impact capital continuum.

As this evolves, partnerships will become even more important, bringing together governments, development organizations, investors, philanthropies, and the private sector to mobilize capital at a greater scale.

We also see growing demand for origination and technical assistance as core components of blended finance, helping businesses become investment-ready in increasingly complex operating environments.

Throughout this, SNV's comparative advantage will continue to be our ability to combine our longstanding context-driven approaches and local presence with technical expertise and trusted partnerships, enabling us to connect locally led solutions with global sources of capital.