The UK’s Development Financial Institution (DFI), CDC, has made an investment of US$15 million into Miro Forestry’s operations in Sierra Leone – one of the countries hardest hit by the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Backed by the Department for International Development, CDC has investments totaling ?2.5 billion across South Asia and Africa, but despite backing Sierra Leone’s first private equity fund in 2009, this investment in London-based Miro Forestry marks CDC Group’s first direct investment in a company operating in the country.
Miro will use the funds to expand its operations by 7,000 hectares, increasing from 1,700 to 8,700 hectares in both Sierra Leone and Ghana, increasing the number of eucalyptus and teak trees planted for timber by four times to approximately 11.3 million.
The World Bank estimates that Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, the three worst-hit countries by the Ebola outbreak, lost a total of US$1.6 billion in economic growth last year. Those at CDC Group see this investment as the group’s efforts to help rebuild Sierra Leone’s “fast growing, but delicate post-civil war economy”, others, however are critical that the group is being too cautious and is not investing enough.
This investment will also help conditions in Ghana where illegal logging has already depleted the country’s forests by 25%, and where the practice is on track to completely eliminate the country’s forests within 13 years.
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