Edge Growth, a specialist in small business development, has been named Impact Intermediary of the Year at the 2025 Africa Impact Investment Awards. These awards, sponsored by FirstRand and held last week in Ghana, recognise success in the rapidly growing impact investing industry and celebrate outstanding achievements and contributions that drive positive social and environmental change while creating value for investors in Africa.
Impact intermediaries serve as a vital bridge between capital and high-impact solutions, helping to connect investors with businesses or projects that create positive social and environmental change.
Eligible entities for this year’s Impact Intermediary of the Year category included arrangers, accelerators, incubators, government departments, research and consulting firms, policy think tanks, and professional services companies.
South Africa faces persistent poverty and unemployment, with many SMEs struggling to survive due to a lack of support and resources, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. Since first being established in 2007, Edge Growth has addressed these challenges by combining tailored finance with strategic and technical assistance to overcome barriers including skills gaps and limited market access, ensuring that capital aligns with each SME’s growth needs. Their approach has not only helped individual businesses succeed, but also strengthened the broader impact investing ecosystem, driving inclusive economic growth, job creation, and systemic change in SME financing across South Africa and beyond.
To date, Edge Growth has not only actively contributed to advancing multiple sustainable development goals, but also created over 14,000 jobs, helped more than 60% of supported SMEs to secure or expand corporate contracts, and achieved average annual SME revenue growth rates exceeding 20%.
Edge Growth has strategically aligned with South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) framework, particularly through enterprise and supplier development (ESD) incentives, to channel capital into high-impact businesses.
This approach has attracted private and corporate investment, supporting inclusive economic growth and enabling SMEs to not only access capital, but also essential strategic and operational support for sustainable development.
The company continuously enhances value delivery through strengthened partnerships, strategic investment, and data-driven insights, using digital tools to stay agile and support sustainable SME growth across changing markets. One such tool is Edge Growth's growth tracker - a real-time platform that monitors the impact of its SME development initiatives by capturing key data such as job creation, revenue growth, ownership demographics, business maturity, and procurement shifts. This tool enables continuous learning and refinement of strategies to enhance support for SMEs and strengthen the broader impact investing ecosystem.
For more information, go to www.edgegrowth.com or to access the Edge Growth case study, click on https://lnkd.in/dV_fJSQ2.
