Wednesday, November 20, 2019WASIC Webinar Series with Dawn Hines, co-founder of Aventura Investment Partners and President of WASIC
Topic: A Solution to Rural Poverty in West Africa? - The Impact of Value Chain Services to Smallholder Growers
Please join us in welcoming WASIC President Dawn Hines for our next webinar!
Register for the virtual event here. Registration is required.
Event Description:
Aventura is an impact investor in West Africa, with a goal of investing to enable African farmers to move from subsistence to middle class income levels.
Rural Poverty and flight to cities by young people in Africa is well known. Why is there is no future for them in their hometown villages?
The reality in many parts of West Africa is that investment into agricultural technology and food value chain companies to serve small growers is nearly non-existent. Young people see the difficult and precarious lives of their parents and seek to escape.
Value chain services include local supply of quality seeds and fertilizers, farm machinery services, food processing and cold storage. Investments in these key areas have been proven to have a dramatic impact on the lives of smallholder farmers — doubling or tripling their annual farm incomes. In West Africa, 60% of food produced is lost due to a lack of cold storage.
With a new impact investment model, Aventura seeks to bring wealth to rural communities in West Africa, by bringing critical value chain services directly to the smallholder growers.
Dawn is the President of the Wharton Alumni Social Impact Club. She co-founded Aventura Investment Partners in 2010 and serves as Managing Partner. She is also closely involved in strategy and operations of Aventura portfolio companies.
Dawn's background includes management roles in venture capital (Fortis Group, Vanenburg Ventures in the Netherlands), investment banking (PaineWebber -- now UBS in New York), and new business development (Reuters - Continental Europe, Middle-East & Africa). She also completed a restructuring and turn-around of Hines Industries, a family-owned engineering and manufacturing firm, where she has served as CEO since 2009.
Dawn completed an MBA at the Wharton School and holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.
