Investing in Africa's Land Restoration Champions
About TerraFund
Across Africa, thousands of local organizations are restoring degraded land by growing trees – and creating prosperous futures for their communities. Investing in these grassroots institutions is the only path to scale: They are up to 20x more effective than their larger peers. Yet few can prove their impact, and even fewer use data to engage new financiers and unlock more investment.
Enter TerraFund, a partnership to help local organizations prove their excellence. Since 2021, TerraFund has deployed grants, loans, and equity investments ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 USD to locally led non-profits and enterprises, while equipping them with training, technical support, and state-of-the-art monitoring tools to track and verify their impact.
TerraFund’s portfolio has grown to include hundreds of local organizations across Africa:
-
251
Projects Funded
-
$43
million Invested
-
47.7
million Trees Grown
-
224,000
Hectares Restored
-
171,000
People Employed
-
558,000
Community Members Benefitted
Infrastructure for the Restoration Economy
Financing restoration at scale requires more than capital. It demands proven systems for sourcing, training, funding, and monitoring hundreds of small projects at once. TerraFund has built that infrastructure: replicable processes that enable any financier to deploy significant capital to large portfolios of locally led restoration projects. These systems de-risk investment, reduce the time from planning to planting, and ensure that outcomes are measured, analyzed, and communicated.
 |
Targeting Investments Over time, TerraFund has refined its portfolio strategy to maximize impact per dollar invested. TerraFund found its first cohort in 2022, investing in 101 leading projects across 27 countries to build processes that could scale. To concentrate impact in the three landscapes and better train and support local organizations, TerraFund financed another 97 projects in 2024. With its third cohort, launched in 2026, TerraFund used cutting-edge datasets and local knowledge to target 53 investments in clusters where high-quality, locally led restoration can deliver the greatest outcomes, like the landscape around Rwanda’s Gishwati-Mukura National Park. |
|
Sourcing Pipeline TerraFund has received and screened over 3,500 applications against three core criteria: high-quality restoration practices, local leadership, and operational maturity. This rigorous selection process has built a pipeline of investment-ready organizations that can deliver measurable outcomes. After running open calls for proposals to build pipeline, TerraFund now invites promising organizations into an intensive co-creation process, maximizing biodiversity, water, and livelihood outcomes in the targeted areas. |
 |
 |
Financing Projects & Businesses Through experienced financial intermediaries, TerraFund turns donor funding into six-year performance-based grants, loans, and equity investments. Designed to meet the diverse needs of non-profits and enterprises at different stages of growth, these flexible financing structures ensure accountability to TerraFund while maintaining local ownership of the project. |
|
Verifying Outcomes Combing field-collected data and satellite monitoring, TerraFund partner World Resources Institute created a world-class monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) framework to track progress across tens of thousands of restoration sites. Projects set targets, collect the locations of each site, and report their impact on people and nature every six months. AI-powered technology analyzes satellite imagery to verify the number of trees grown, reducing costs and improving accuracy. This approach proves impact to financiers and empowers local organizations to learn and improve. |
 |
Stories from the Field
Restoration is driven by people, the farmers, community leaders, and entrepreneurs who live on their land and are committed to its future. In these immersive stories, local organizations share how TerraFund has helped them create jobs, improve food security, and build climate resilience.
Partners
TerraFund supports World Resources Institute’s Restore Local project, which advances locally led restoration across Africa's vital landscapes.
Project Consortium
In 2021, World Resources Institute, One Tree Planted, and Realize Impact co-founded TerraFund. Vumbuzi Impact Africa Foundation joined the partnership in 2025.
Financial Partners
Invest in Africa’s Land Restoration Champions
Are you an investor interested in funding Africa’s land restoration champions? Reach out to our team for further inquiry.