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.

While CDC has an established methodology for assessing the development impact of its investments, we also recognise that no two companies are the same.  Each investment that is made by CDC can have different results so we also capture some individual impacts from a sample of our investment portfolio.

Here are some examples of CDC’s impact at investee company level:

• In 2010 Ugandan power distribution company, Umeme, connected over 48,000 new customers and replaced over 120,000 rotten electricity poles;

• One of CDC’s 12 education investments, Manipal Universal, is currently training over 70,000 students through its distance, vocational and continuing education initiatives in India;

• Tatepa in East Africa procures 95% of its green leaf tea from 15,000 smallholders who have almost 3,000 hectares under cultivation. The factory also buys firewood for its drying ovens from smallholders to help them generate additional income; and

• Since CDC’s investment, Saisudhir has completed projects worth US$98m, to provide water to villages across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and commission water treatment plants to provide over 50 million litres of safe drinking water per day to villages in Rajasthan, Goa and Karnataka.