Businesses often face a perceived trade-off between profitability and achieving social or environmental outcomes. This perception is reinforced by the absence of standardized frameworks for measuring impact alongside financial performance. While financial metrics provide clarity and comparability, social impact data tends to be complex, non-standardized, and difficult to assess across organisations, hindering a full understanding of an investment’s broader contributions.
New methodologies, such as the Multiple of Impact (MOI) developed by Bridgespan and AfricInvest, are addressing this challenge. MOI provides a framework that evaluates each company’s context and translates social and environmental outcomes into monetized figures comparable to traditional return metrics. For instance, Oze, assessed using this framework, reports a 36x impact return on every dollar invested. This case highlights how purpose-driven businesses can potentially combine meaningful social impact with economic returns.
This evolving approach is encouraging investors to reassess the link between financial success and social good. Oze focuses on supporting small businesses and enhancing financial inclusion—a strategy that seeks to generate both community upliftment and economic value. This, in turn, has drawn private-sector investment interest, suggesting that socially responsible innovation can align with commercial viability.
In practice, many African small businesses face barriers to finance, often enduring high interest rates and limited access to capital. Oze’s platform has facilitated nearly $1 million in loans, with reductions in interest rates from around 21% per month to about 3%. According to estimates, this has contributed to €102 million in interest savings and €489 million in overall value generation.
Oze also reports significant engagement with women entrepreneurs, noting that its services have helped women-owned businesses avoid approximately $7.5 million in losses and unlock $23.2 million in new business opportunities through improved financial management and credit access.
Oze’s impact is not limited to facilitating loans. The startup is also setting new standards for how SMEs in emerging marketing manage their finances.By providing businesses with digital tools to manage finances and access affordable loans, Oze is addressing critical barriers to financial inclusion. At the same time, its approach delivers strong financial returns, as evidenced by the 36x impact multiplier for every dollar invested. This balance of purpose and profitability demonstrates that with the right innovation, it’s possible to both uplift communities and generate substantial economic value.
About Oze
Oze is on a mission to build 100 million profitable small businesses across Africa. Our platform uses machine learning to credit score MSMEs for banks and other lenders automating their digital lending processes. For MSMEs, our business management software makes it easy to track sales, expenses, and customer information. The data is analyzed to provide tailored recommendations, reports, business education, and even access to capital. Oze now provides services to banks and small businesses in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Benin, Togo and Cote D’Ivoire and is quickly expanding across the continent.
