Before he became a bridge to opportunity for others, Erison Tumusime faced a wall that is all too familiar to young people across Africa. After high school, Erison had the grades and the ambition to pursue a degree, but like millions of his peers, he lacked the upfront capital and collateral required by traditional banks to secure a loan. In a world of rigid financial systems, Erison’s potential was invisible. He was not seen as a future leader, but as a risky investment.
At Chancen International, we believe that through our innovative blended finance model, we can help brilliant minds like Erison’s transition from potential to prosperity. By utilizing an Income Share Agreement (ISA), Erison was able to finance his degree in Management at Kepler University. Today, Erison has moved from beneficiary to a community builder, working at an international NGO that aims to end avoidable blindness. Erison’s story demonstrates that when you invest in a young person, you invest in the community they serve.
Why traditional finance falls short
In my last post, I wrote about how fintech has transformed how money moves across Africa — mobile payments, digital wallets, instant transfers. It's real progress. But moving money faster doesn't automatically get it to the people who need it most. A young person like Erison doesn't need a faster payment app. He needs someone willing to invest in him before he has a track record.
Traditional lenders aren't built for that. They're built to minimize risk and to minimize risk, they rely on data: credit scores, income history, collateral. First-generation university students have none of those things. So the system, by design, leaves them out.
This is the gap we're working to close not just for individual students, but at scale.
How blended finance makes it work
The tool we use is called blended finance. The name sounds technical, but the idea is straightforward: combine different types of investors, each playing a different role, so the whole fund can do more than any one of them could alone.
Here's how it works in practice.
Philanthropic funders come in first. They take the most risk agreeing to absorb any losses if things go wrong. They're not expecting a profit. They want their money back eventually, but they're willing to wait and willing to absorb some loss to make the model possible. Think of them as the foundation of a building. Without them, nothing else stands.
Because they're there, other investors feel safe coming in. These are private investors — impact funds, foundations with investment portfolios, family offices — who do expect a financial return. They lend to the fund at a fixed rate, knowing that if any students default or struggle to repay, the philanthropic layer absorbs that loss first. Their money is protected. And because student repayments flow back into the fund, their capital gets recycled to finance the next generation of students.
The result: every dollar a philanthropic funder puts in helps unlock significantly more from private investors. One layer makes the other possible, often with a 1 to 2 ratio. Together, they finance students who would otherwise have no options.
This approach is already well-established in areas like renewable energy and infrastructure finance places where the social need is clear but private investors need some reassurance before they'll commit. We're applying the same logic to human capital.
But importantly, blended finance only works when everyone involved is aligned around what actually matters: real outcomes for the young person. Not just capital deployed or loans issued but meaningful outcomes like employment and income growth which drive transformative life impact and underpin the sustainability of the model.
What we're building toward
This model powers Chancen's Future of Work Fund (FWF). We recently hit a major milestone: a $29 million commitment from the UBS Optimus Foundation and co-funders. Our goal is to close the fund at $33 million by the end of 2026 — enough to support approximately 15,000 young people across the continent.
This first close signals an important shift in the impact financing space. What was once an emerging idea is becoming a data-driven lesson in optimism - youth are investable.
It is with this core belief at heart - and our track record across 10,000+ young people financed to date - that we are preparing the launch of our next $40 million investment vehicle - the Future of Work Fund 2.0 which will pave the way for us to finance 60,000+ young people and their bright futures by 2029.
