DFI sponsorship of new platforms and ventures: why and how?
Organized by the Private Sector Development Research Network
Hosted by ODI Global
Moderated by Paddy Carter, British International Investment
Friday, 6th of June 2025 from 9-10am EST
LINK TO REGISTER AND JOIN WILL BE AVAILABLE HERE SOON
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
This seminar will explore how Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are addressing development gaps by initiating their own commercial ventures. The discussion will examine how institutions like British International Investment (BII) and Norfund are developing concepts, raising capital, and managing operations to generate investments in critical sectors such as infrastructure, healthcare, and agriculture in challenging markets. Speakers will highlight successful examples including Gridworks, which is expanding electricity access in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and MedAccess, which provides guarantees to reduce medical product costs in Africa. The seminar will offer insights on how DFIs can effectively scale their development impact and mobilize private capital, particularly in difficult markets and smaller, lower-income countries with high investment risks.
Neil Gregory
Senior Research Associate, Development and Public Finance, ODI Global
Neil Gregory is an internationally recognized expert on development finance, private capital mobilization and impact investing. He is a Senior Research Associate at ODI Global, and a Senior Advisor to West Potomac Capital and NetPurpose, and he teaches sustainable finance and impact investing at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. He has consulted for a range of MDBs, DFIs, international institutions and impact investing organizations.
Neil previously held senior research, strategy, and operational roles at IFC and the World Bank, most recently as Chief Thought Leadership Officer. He led multi-stakeholder processes resulting in the creation of the ‘Operating Principles for Impact Management’, the global standard for impact management and measurement, and the joint MDB-DFI methodology for reporting private capital mobilization. He established the Private Sector Development Research Network to bring together researchers from thinktanks, academic institutions and MDBs/DFIs around the world.
Neil has authored a wide range of books, reports, articles in peer-reviewed journals, opinion pieces and blogs. He has degrees in Economics from Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and an MBA from Georgetown University.
For more details about Neil’s work, please see here.
Nerea Craviotto
Senior EU Policy Analyst, ODI Europe
Nerea Craviotto is European Senior Policy Analyst for ODI Europe. Building on ODI Global’s work and analysis, she develops impactful work to inform European external policies and new forms of regional and global cooperation.
Prior to working with ODI Europe, Nerea has almost 20 years of experience working on policy and advocacy work on sustainable development policies and development finance with civil society organizations, the trade unions, and feminist organizations. She has done few years of programmatic work as well supporting feminist and women’s rights organizing in Palestine. Nerea holds a master degree in Development Policies from the Deusto University and a degree in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
For more details about Nerea’s work, please see here.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Paddy Carter,
Head of Development Economics, British International Investment
Paddy Carter joined British International Investment as Director of Research and Policy in May 2019. Previously, Paddy was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD) and before that at ODI Global, where he specialized in aid allocation, private sector development strategies of donors and the role of development finance institutions.
Paddy has a PhD in Economics, on the topic of foreign aid, from the University of Bristol, where he was also a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow. His research has been published in leading economic journals, including the Journal of International Economics, the IMF Economic Review, the European Economic Review and World Development.
Before taking up economics, Paddy was an equities analyst with Bridgewell Securities and RW Baird, and a financial journalist at Investors Chronicle before that.
For more details about Paddy’s work, please see here.