This is an anonimized version of the update shared with our investors - Accra, March 2022 - Dear Investor, As we witness a rebound from the pandemic globally and nationally the outlook for BI looks impressive. Our metrics are falling in line with our targets and expectations. We have gotten off to a good start by signing some new investors while some existing investors have reinvested in our fund. We are optimistic that we would be successful in our fundraising and that we would be able to admit more students and expand internationally. We are positive that we will continue to see a decline in unemployment and an increase in distributions and repayment.

Brighter Investment (BI) has tested an investment-led model for higher education financing in Africa since 2015. But, beyond improving access to quality higher education, Brighter Investment considers itself a major dealer in hope. Through our education financing product and student support program, we have seen hundreds of high potential students in Africa gain access to quality higher education and increase their income by up to 5x.

The document below is a generic version of the update sent to our investors at the end of the second semester of the 2020-2021 academic year: Dear Investor, For Brighter Investment as an education financial institution, the negative impact of Covid could have been devastating. A loan model would see default rates shoot up under the current economic circumstances, our more robust income sharing model sees delayed repayments but still no defaults. In the short term, there is an impact on the financial performance of your investment with us. But due to the diversification of our portfolio of the brightest students with quality degrees, BI students are already finding jobs 66% faster than they did at the height of the pandemic. Over the last three semesters, the average amount repaid by graduated BI students is 81% higher than what it was in the three months before Covid. These signs of recovery mean that when compared to the previous semester, distributions are up by 33%.

It has been over a year since Covid disrupted business activities, studies, and our lives in general. As a result, economic growth has slowed down, many businesses struggle and there is elevated unemployment around the world. In developing countries where poorer people are disproportionally hard hit, our mission is critical for an equitable growth out of this crisis. We are more committed than ever to ensure that all bright students have access to higher education and become successful.

To expand our student investment program, aslo beyond the borders of Ghana, Brighter Investment is offering investors the opportunity to invest in our $2 mln fundraising round consiting of both debt and equity. The slides in our investment deck are presented in this article with audio comments by our team.

From a little over 40 female applicants in 2015 to well over 2000 female applicants in 2020, Brighter Investment has proven that attaining a gender-inclusive model for higher education financing in developing countries is possible. Women in developing countries are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of quality higher education and many of them are ensuring that nothing holds them back from living their dreams and attaining the highest of heights in education and career. This is an opportunity Brighter Investment leveraged in 2015 (when it supported its first cohort of students,) and continues to leverage (after six cohorts) to grow investors’ wealth and make the dreams of many young Ghanaians come true.

The unprecedented Covid-19 crisis means that our bright students may need a little more time to graduate due to prolonged school closures or take longer to find a job due to the resulting economic downturn. But one way or another, our bright students will find their way to success. Our scenario analyses presented in this post show that your investment will follow a similar trajectory: school closures and increased unemployment may delay distributions, but long term returns remain strong. This is the letter our CEO sent to all our investors last week.

Funded by a crowdfunding campaign for the first cohort, followed by Impact investors for subsequent years, we have been investing in the higher education of the brightest students since 2015. Gradually building a successful track record has convinced investors to make larger investments and has allowed us to grow our cohorts. The long term objective has always been to prove the model to institutional investors who have the capital to really scale it up. With Vancity as our first institutional investor we’ve made a large step forward towards that goal.

“There was no money for me to go to school, things were very difficult for me since my mum lost her job. She wasn't working as a trader anymore, but with that determination that inspires me every day, I told myself I have to get a way out.” - Watch this video about Jacinta Ayambire Awinemina, Brighter student.

The unprecedented Covid-19 crisis means that our bright students may need a little more time to graduate due to prolonged school closures or take longer to find a job due to the resulting economic downturn. But one way or another, our bright students will find their way to success. Our scenario analyses presented in this post show that your investment will follow a similar trajectory: school closures and increased unemployment may delay distributions, but long term returns remain strong. This is the letter our CEO sent to all our investors last week.

Are you a recent computer science graduate who is equally interested in the business impact of your projects as the technology behind it? Someone for whom simple and good sounds better than high-tech? Someone that can talk to developers about the latest technologies as well as talk to end users about functionality and requirements? And do you want your work to make a positive contribution to the world? If you’ve answered yes to all of these, we should talk...

Are you a successful fundraiser for a non-profit or social impact venture? And are you interested in a high responsibility/impactful role at a Vancouver based for-profit with a mission to improve the lives of millions? Let’s talk. Help us invest in the education of the most talented students in developing countries.

And it’s signed! We’re very happy to announce that Brighter Investment and the Ghanaian government have decided to work together on improving accessibility to higher education in Ghana. The Ghanaian government of President Nana Akufo-Addo has rolled out a program that makes senior high school free for all Ghanaian students. This has, over little more than two years, increased enrollment in senior high school from 308,000 students to 430,000 students and is expected to increase demand for tertiary education by 50% over the next 5 years. To pay for this increased demand, the Ghanaian government is looking for private partners like Brighter Investment.

My name is Joy Lamptey, and I am the student success manager at Brighter Investment. Growing up, I was lucky to have had a family that made me believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I wanted to be a surgeon, and later an architect. But someway somehow, someone somewhere suggested, “why not a nurse or an interior designer?”, They had no other reasons except for the fact that it would be a perfect career path for a pretty intelligent girl like me. Inexperienced as I was at the time, I believed these lines. This is just one of the many gender specific barriers women face on their path to career success. At Brighter Investment we’re solving these.

The Brighter Investment model, an investment in a student's higher education in return for a % of their future income, naturally results in a focus on the brightest students pursuing the degree programs with the best career potential. The consequence of this focus on career potential and income, is that the majority of degrees Brighter Investment supports are programs in science, technology, engineering, medicine as well as certain business and finance degrees. Degrees in art and the humanities are examples of areas that we currently don’t support students in. Why not? And should that change?

In 2015 Brighter Investment supported the first high potential students in Ghana. The deal is, we pay for their higher education, and after graduating students repay our investors a percentage of their income. After investing in a second cohort in 2016 and a third cohort in 2017, we can now confidently say, you should invest in our 2018 cohort because: 1. Graduated students show that our model works; 2. You'll earn a predictable and attractive return; 3. Your investment will change the world for the better.

This interview with our CEO was originally published by SVX in Toronto - Tell us a little about your background and your journey into social entrepreneurship: My journey started with me doing aerospace engineering in the Netherlands. We’re talking about a pre-Musk, pre-SpaceX era, and space projects were slow and bureaucratic, much less exciting than

In 2015 Brighter Investment supported the first high potential students in Ghana. The deal is, we pay for their degree, after graduating students repay our investors a percentage of their increased income. Initially our projections were based on data we got from research and partners. Based on this data, we have been able to make reliable projections for our investors' ROI. However, as our model was unproven, we based our projections on conservative values for these relevant variables. Now, 2,5 years into the program, we can show that our first graduated and repaying students are indeed performing better than our conservative projections and are proving the validity of our investment model.