We didn’t create a company, we created a way of working together

Our First Decade: A Timeline – by Rodrigo Madrazo, Chief Executive Officer, EDFI Management Company

To open our tenth-anniversary Corporate Day, I invited some of the people who shaped EDFI MC’s first decade onto the stage, one chapter at a time. Together, they retraced our story from a first phone call to the guarantee programmes of today.

If I had to choose one word for our first ten years, it would be partnership. So rather than tell our history myself, I asked the people who lived it to tell it with.

One by one, they joined me on stage: Nanno Kleiterp, Honorary Chair of the EDFI Association; Søren Peter Andreasen, Deputy CEO of Impact Fund Denmark and Chair of our Board from 2016 to 2026; Georgios Pantoulis and Régis Meritan, who helped design ElectriFI and AgriFI at the European Commission; Pere Joan Ribas, who was there before EDFI MC existed; Paul Buysens, Co-CEO of Incofin and one of AgriFI’s first investees; Fadila Hamdane, who led our guarantee programmes before joining back Proparco; Karin Kronhöffer of Swedfund; Luuk Zonneveld, Chairman of the Board of the EDFI Association; and Markus Gabbert, former General counsel of  KfW DEG and the only person who has been with EDFI MC from its first day.

To be accurate, I would have needed to invite dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. Only a few could join us on stage, but believe me, every one of them has been key to our history. I want to recognise in particular the ambition and enthusiasm of Frederik van den Bosch, our founding CEO, who could not be with us that day. At the European Commission, Roberto Ridolfi had the vision to call on the European DFIs in the first place. Without them and many others, we would have had little to celebrate. Here is our story, as they told it.

2014–2015: An offer we couldn’t refuse

It started with a phone call. Roberto Ridolfi at the European Commission was creating a private-sector window, starting with energy access, and he wanted the European DFIs on board. At the time, Nanno told us, the DFIs were barely known in Brussels, and the EDFI Secretariat was just two people. 2015 was the year of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Addis Ababa, the adoption of the SDGs and the signing of the Paris Agreement, and all of them named the private sector as essential to development. In October 2015, the CEOs of the European DFIs were called to Brussels at short notice.

With Nanno in the chair and Bruno Wenn presenting the proposal, they decided, unanimously, to create a joint management company. Not everyone was convinced, and nobody knew quite how big it would become.

“If we didn’t take this opportunity, we wouldn’t be relevant for the European Commission in the coming decades. If you look at our fears at the beginning and where we are today, it is amazing.”

— Nanno Kleiterp, Honorary Chair, EDFI Association

2016: Starting from scratch

In 2016, EDFI MC was born, and Søren became Chair of the Board. There was no company yet, so we built one. Frederik made the first trip to IKEA to furnish our office, in the same building where we work today. Some of that furniture is still there. Pere was one of the first to sit in those chairs. The early days meant bridging two worlds. Many Commission colleagues had never built a portfolio or sat on an investment committee. Many DFIs worried that blended finance would distort markets. But there was a tremendous momentum for innovation in development finance during this period and many good colleagues were determined to make it work.

“Sometimes that kind of impetus is exactly what allows you to think afresh and start something new.”

— Søren Peter Andreasen, Deputy CEO, Impact Fund Denmark

ElectriFI: our first facility

The Commission sought a transformative response to the financing gap in the last mile of energy access. Its aim was to make public funding go further by unlocking private investment in affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy, including in poor rural areas. ElectriFI was created to work closely with private investors and financiers throughout the project cycle. It aimed to develop bankable new business models with strong potential for scale and replication. The need for such a tool was clear. Demand grew rapidly, and expectations grew even faster. The partnership between the Commission and EDFI inspired confidence and helped drive the initiative’s expansion. EU Member States increasingly supported ElectriFI’s collaborative approach, which anticipated the success later achieved through the Team Europe approach. Partners such as Power Africa also joined. Additional funding was mobilised before a single euro had been disbursed from the initial EU allocation, and each new contribution also required a new contract for EDFI to manage.

“It all started thanks to the vision of policy leaders determined to drive change, but it endured thanks to the hard work of those able to navigate and manage complexity.”

— Georgios Pantoulis, Resident Policy Analyst, European Commission Services in Greece

AgriFI: taking the model to agriculture

Agriculture is riskier by nature, which is exactly why smallholders and agribusinesses struggle to find finance. Régis shared a story of how it started. His British deputy warned him that “to agrify” is an old word meaning to aggravate, to make things worse. Régis decided it was a risk worth taking. Paul, whose Fairtrade Access Fund was one of AgriFI’s first investments, remembered something else. He recalled our field trips together: a small plane over the Bolivian Amazon, five hours in a 4×4, and two more on the back of motorbikes to reach a community growing Brazil nuts while protecting the forest.

“You did a lot, in millions, but recalling the words of a former Director, Roberto Ridolfi, it should not be not about millions anymore, it should be now about billions: DFI’s risk aversion or appetence remains the key issue to generate impact at scale”.

— Regis Meritan, Senior Expert, Head of Sector “Agricultural Growth”, DG INTPA F3, European Commission

“Your team are great ambassadors. That is a really strong added value from EDFI MC: helping us to mobilise more capital.”

— Paul Buysens, Co-CEO, Incofin

2020: Syndication platforms, and a pandemic

In 2019, the DFIs decided that EDFI MC should take over their co-financing platforms, EFP and ICCF, which the EDFI Secretariat had run since 2003 and 2011. Pere and his team moved with them. On paper, the handover at the start of 2020 was smooth. Then COVID arrived, and we found ourselves in a new company, with new procedures, in lockdown. Because the investment teams across the DFIs already knew and trusted each other, the work carried on. In less than 100 days, together, we set up a COVID response window that made around €600 million ready to disburse within ten business days to DFI clients hit by the crisis.

“Ten years ago, we didn’t create a company. We created a way of working together.”

— Pere Joan Ribas, Investment Facilitation and Development Finance Institutions Expert (External Consultant), DG INTPA, European Commission

2022–2024: The guarantee leap

In 2022 came our biggest transformation: bringing all the European DFIs and the Commission together around common EFSD+ guarantee programmes. Fadila joined at just the right moment, in late 2023, to negotiate and implement the EFSD+ programmes. In early 2024, the Commission asked to complete the negotiation of every programme by the end of the year. Two were nearly ready and four had not started, and the team was small. With experts lent by our shareholders and a dedicated Commission team, we made it. Today the programmes are running, with roughly one new inclusion submitted every week.

“We were able to succeed in a very short time because we had high trust between the partners, built over the years.”

— Fadila Hamdane, now Regional Director Europe, Proparco

As Karin put it, it works because everyone does what they do best.

“Geopolitical or development challenges cannot be sorted out on a one-to-one transactional basis. Programmes let us be proactive and predictable.”

— Karin Kronhöffer, Chief Strategy and Communications Officer, Swedfund

All along: the people

Luuk reminded us that in the beginning, DFIs and the Commission were “alien bodies” to each other. It took about two years of meeting, and talking, to build confidence and iron out tricky issues. His favourite memory is of a celebration for African diaspora entrepreneurs, where he was invited by Ridolfi. When the drum band started, they ended up dancing together. “For me,” he said, “the story of EDFI MC is dancing with ‘Ridolfis’.” Markus, the only person who has been with EDFI MC since its first day, remembered when nobody knew who we were.

“The challenge is to keep these factors alive: personal engagement, passion and, most of all, a convergence of interests.”

— Luuk Zonneveld, Chairman of the Board of Directors, EDFI Association

“What was underestimated was the catalytic aspect of EDFI MC: not to provide money, but to bring different stakeholders together.”

— Markus Gabbert, former General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, DEG – Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH

Ten years of impact, in numbers and in faces

We marked the anniversary with our 10 Years of Impact report, launched on Corporate Day. It brings together what our partnership has achieved since 2016. That includes €243.3 million invested in 87 companies through our blending facilities and €325 million guaranteed across 36 transactions. More importantly, it shows how the businesses we support have made a real difference on the ground. Read the full report

Around the room, a photo exhibition took the same stories beyond the figures. It showed entrepreneurs building businesses, farmers strengthening their livelihoods, companies creating decent jobs and communities gaining access to essential services. These are the people our work is ultimately for.

Into the next decade

Looking back with these colleagues, I was struck by how much of our story rests on people who took a risk on an idea before it had proven itself. They include those who built the first contracts, managed the complexity, and kept the partnership going through COVID and through a year of intense guarantee negotiations.

The next decade will ask even more of us. European interests are shifting, the pressure on public budgets is real, and the needs in our partner countries are as urgent as ever. The challenge is to keep what made the first decade work: shared interests, personal engagement and trust. On top of that, we need to build the scale that our partners and the Commission expect.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined me on stage, and to all those who could not. A special thank you to Markus Gabbert, who has been with us since day one and steps down from our Board this year, and to Søren Peter Andreasen for ten years as our Chair. And thank you to every EDFI MC colleague, past and present. Ten years ago we created a way of working together. Let’s make the next ten count.