From micro-loans to market assets: how a Rabo Partnerships’ portfolio company is unlocking capital along African food & agri value chains

Kaleidofin, a Rabo Partnerships portfolio company, has helped to facilitate what is understood to be Kenya’s first private sector, local-currency securitisation in the smallholder agriculture sector. The Company worked on this alongside loan originator Apollo Agriculture and anchor investor IDH Farmfit Fund. The transaction mobilised KES 276mln (c. EUR 1.87mln) by converting a portfolio of agricultural loan receivables into an investable structured asset. Rabo Partnerships welcomes the transaction as a clear demonstration of how different participants in the agricultural finance ecosystem can play complementary roles in mobilising capital. By combining loan origination, risk and structuring infrastructure, and catalytic investment capital, the transaction shows how agricultural lending portfolios could become more accessible to institutional investors.

“This transaction demonstrates that portfolios of smallholder farmer receivables can be transformed into investable, institutional-grade assets. Kaleidofin's risk intelligence and debt capital markets platform enabled the structuring of a high-quality securitisation while aligning incentives among originators, investors and service providers to support strong portfolio performance. The establishment of a structured finance SPV programme in Mauritius further reduces transaction costs and creates a repeatable framework through which institutional capital can flow efficiently into agricultural value chains at scale.” – Sucharita Mukherjee, Co-founder and CEO, Kaleidofin

Kaleidofin is an Indian financial technology company that builds the infrastructure needed to make fragmented, real economy lending portfolios transparent and fundable. Its capabilities span machine learning based credit scoring, a platform that connects originators to funders, risk management tools and reporting dashboards, as well as infrastructure for debt capital markets and securitisation. Together these tools allow large numbers of small, dispersed loans to be assessed and packaged with a consistency that institutional capital requires.

Rabo Partnerships invested in Kaleidofin in 2024 with a c. USD 11mln investment, reflecting a shared conviction that better data and risk infrastructure are preconditions for moving capital into underserved agricultural markets. That conviction sits at the heart of Rabo Partnerships’ approach: invest in the platforms and partners that can build the missing market infrastructure, then let that infrastructure unlock capital at scale.

IDH Farmfit Fund, which acted as anchor investor in the Kenyan transaction, is part of the blended finance ecosystem that Rabo Partnerships supports. Blended finance, combining catalytic and commercial capital, plays a central role in de-risking early first-of-their-kind transactions and giving institutional investors the confidence to participate.

The portfolio securitised in Kenya was originated by Apollo Agriculture, which provides farm inputs and financing to smallholders. It comprised loans to 23,839 smallholder farmers, of whom 51% were women and 22% were first-time borrowers. These are precisely the borrowers that conventional capital markets have struggled to reach: high-impact, real-economy, and historically invisible to institutional risk models.

By applying its risk intelligence and structuring infrastructure, Kaleidofin helped make this granular portfolio legible to investors, packaging the receivables into a local-currency instrument that IDH Farmfit Fund could anchor. The result is a template for how dispersed agricultural lending can be transformed from an operationally intensive book of micro-loans into a structured asset that institutional investors can hold.

The mechanics are important because they are repeatable. An originator such as Apollo Agriculture generates loan receivables in the course of its core business. Kaleidofin’s machine learning based credit scoring and risk infrastructure render those receivables transparent. This can standardise the data, surface portfolio risk, and producing the dashboards and reporting that funders expect. Its securitisation infrastructure then converts the portfolio into a local currency structured finance instrument, with a blended finance anchor (IDH Farmfit Fund) which can help to crowd in further capital.

The benefit runs in three directions. The originator recycles capital off its balance sheet and can redeploy it into new lending, extending its reach to more farmers. The investor gains access to real-economy asset in local currency, supported by the transparency, reporting and structure required by institutional capital. Farmers stand to benefit if structures such as this are replicated at scale, as an increased flow of capital into agricultural lending can enable lenders to serve more eligible borrowers over time. The capital mobilisation model is, in principle, portable far beyond this single transaction. Additional tranches to optimise risk and return for different types of investors can also be built into these structures.

This transaction is agri-focused, but the model is not limited to agriculture. The same securitisation logic, turning granular real-economy receivables into investable assets, could in time support other Food & Agri and energy-transition portfolios, from climate smart agriculture and solar irrigation to cold storage, distributed energy, electric mobility, mechanisation, rural infrastructure and pay as you go energy assets. It is also a notable signal of shifting investment and trade flows: an Indian fintech platform is helping build market infrastructure for agricultural finance in Africa.

For Rabo Partnerships, the transaction embodies the spirit of our “Unite to Unlock” message that collaboration, innovation, data, blended finance and partnerships can unlock capital for agricultural finance where traditional channels fall short. And it points to future opportunities across Rabobank’s Food & Agri ecosystem: for agri corporates, input suppliers, processors, financial institutions and NBFIs, distributors, off-grid energy companies and climate-transition platforms who need to convert real-economy activity into investable fundable assets.

“Rabo Partnerships is enabling innovative capital market solutions that connect institutional investors with high impact assets in emerging markets. The first private sector agricultural securitisation in Kenya is a tangible proof point of how this approach can unlock new sources of funding for smallholder farmers at scale. By channelling capital into agricultural value chains, this model not only improves farmers’ access to finance, enabling them to invest in productivity and potentially double their yields, but also strengthens entire supply chains. In doing so, it supports Africa’s ambition to become more self-sufficient in food production, while enabling Food and Agri clients to deliver high quality inputs and services, creating a resilient, inclusive and future proof agricultural ecosystem.” – David Gerbrands, CEO at Rabo Partnerships