Impact

At ACT Fund, impact is not an outcome—it is embedded in every investment.

Agricultural value chains can only be truly sustainable when they work for the people and ecosystems that sustain them. Across many commodity dependent regions, smallholder farmers remain exposed to unstable prices, weak market access, climate shocks, and land degradation. ACT Fund’s impact approach responds to this challenge by financing and supporting agri SMEs that can strengthen farmer livelihoods while adopting or promoting regenerative agricultural systems and practices.

Impact is therefore not treated as an add on to investment. It is embedded in how ACT selects opportunities, structures support, and measures progress over time. ACT’s impact strategy is built around Inclusive Regenerative Agriculture, or IRA, which places smallholder farmers at the centre of regenerative systems designed to restore soils, enhance biodiversity, build climate resilience, and improve rural livelihoods.

ACT’s Theory of Change starts from a simple premise: smallholder farmers often cannot capture the full value of what they produce because they face barriers to finance, technical support, and market access. Agri SMEs can help close that gap by linking farmers to higher value markets, providing services and inputs, and creating more stable and transparent supply chains. But to do so at scale, these businesses themselves need appropriate financing and capacity support. ACT responds by combining flexible debt financing with technical assistance to help investees grow in ways that are both inclusive and regenerative.

This approach is designed to create a chain of results. At the activity level, ACT finances and supports agri SMEs capable of scaling regenerative transitions. At the output level, this increases farmer access to knowledge, inputs, and regenerative practices. At the outcome level, it contributes to more stable incomes, improved soil fertility, greater resource efficiency, and stronger resilience to climate shocks. At the impact level, it supports improved livelihoods, environmental restoration, biodiversity enhancement, and climate mitigation and adaptation.

ACT’s impact strategy aligns with internationally recognised frameworks to ensure that impact is measured in a credible, transparent, and decision useful way. The Fund’s SDG Impact Framework focuses on five core Sustainable Development Goals where ACT can make direct and measurable contributions: SDG 1, SDG 5, SDG 8, SDG 13, and SDG 15.

ACT uses IRIS+ aligned environmental indicators to measure the regenerative and climate related performance of its investments. Core indicators include hectares under cultivation and greenhouse gas emissions sequestered, which help ACT monitor how portfolio companies contribute to sustainable land use, improved soil health, and climate mitigation. ACT also sees the uptake of Inclusive Regenerative Agriculture practices as a key metric within its framework, because these practices directly link investment activity to environmental and livelihood outcomes.

By combining IRIS+ with its SDG framework, ACT translates its impact strategy into a practical monitoring system that supports accountability, comparability, and continuous learning across the investment cycle. The Fund uses these indicators not only to report on results, but also to guide due diligence, establish baselines, structure reporting templates, and monitor progress over time.