Overview

CDC has supported promising businesses in poor countries for over 60 years, reinvesting our profits and helping more and more businesses to grow. We operate on a clear and widely-recognised premise, that no country in the world has been able to reduce poverty without economic growth.

Flourishing private sector businesses of all kinds and sizes are essential for that growth: they employ and train people, pay taxes that allow governments to finance public services and infrastructure, and invest in research and development. Thriving businesses provide the poor with increased access to new and higher quality goods and services at competitive prices.

CDC does not provide aid. Instead, our job is to invest UK money in a commercially sustainable way in the poorer countries of the developing world, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Helping businesses to grow and, in doing so, creating opportunities for people in the poorest nations to help themselves, is at the heart of what we do.

CDC also demonstrates to other investors that it is possible to invest successfully and responsibly in promising businesses in parts of the world that are often neglected and face a shortage of capital.