Featured: Faith, finance, and the future: How Missio Invest is empowering church-led growth in Africa

The Catholic Church proclaims the Gospel in its words but also its actions through education, healthcare, social outreach, and the like. In this interview, The New Times speaks with Fr. Andrew Small, CEO and Founder of Missio Invest, a social impact fund that provides affordable capital through repayable loans to Church institutions: Please introduce yourself and Missio Invest. I am Rev Andrew Small, CEO and President of Missio Invest. I have been a missionary priest and Oblate of Mary Immaculate for over 30 years. Missio Invest originated in Kigali in 2015 as a way of accessing the kind of funds the Church in Africa needs. Over the past ten years, Missio Invest has approved loans worth more than $40 million to over 135 Church projects in 11 countries across Africa. I trained and taught law in Washington, DC. I have worked in pastoral ministry in Brazil and the United States, and most recently served as the Secretary of the Pope’s Child Protection Commission in the Vatican. I am originally from Liverpool, UK. What is the story behind Missio Invest, and how does it relate to the Catholic Church? Donations are falling, and traditional funders in the US and Europe are pulling back. Yet Catholic organisations, dioceses, congregations, universities, and foundations in those places have tens of billions of dollars in investments. Missio Invest does two things. First, it calls on Catholics in the West to restore at least 10% of those investment funds to those for whom they were intended so that they can serve the people they are close to. Second, we empower local Church groups in the Global South to use these resources professionally and efficiently so that they generate their own income, can stand on their own two feet, and be less dependent on dwindling sources of donations. Specifically, how is Missio Invest growing church development initiatives in Africa? We provide low-interest loans and technical assistance to Catholic dioceses and congregations of men and women, especially indigenous congregations. After the first missionaries went back to their countries, they left behind land, structures, and personnel. But they took their financial assets with them. We are calling on those assets and putting them to productive. We work with local Church leaders in Africa to develop their ideas and plans for ministry so they can invest in their farming to employ and feed more people, renovate their hospitals by buying new equipment or upgrading their facilities to heal more people or expand the thousands of Catholic education institutions owned and operated by the Church and for which they seldom receive support from established Catholic aid agencies. Why do you only lend to Church organisations? Unlike regular banks, Missio Invest does not ask for collateral from our borrowers, and we lend money for up to seven years. Being a part of the Church provides a moral guarantee that people will not abandon their commitments to repay. In addition, we are reinforcing the sense of solidarity, which is to say that by borrowing and repaying on time, you are enabling other mission-driven groups to fulfil their commitments to the local people they serve. And it works very well. Talking of sustainable development, how is Missio Invest applying the principles of impact investing to promote human development? In impact investing, we promise our investors clear and verifiable data around social impact. That means they are not just looking for financial returns but want to see jobs created, economic growth, human dignity strengthened, and better access to markets, food and nutrition, healthcare and education. You can see that from our impact report for 2024. Our borrowers don’t just want some financial return, but they want to see a real impact that includes long-term sustainability. In doing so, Missio Invest offers a model of faith-consistent investment that renews the Church’s social mission and empowers it to be a beacon of hope in the world’s most challenging places. Relate that to faith and finance. How do the two concepts match and work together to achieve sustainable impact? Throughout history, the Church has drawn on the experience of grace to discern how to respond to the joys and the anxieties of people in every age. In this process of discernment, the Church’s teaching on charis (which is Latin for charity or love) has remained a vital part of Christian fidelity. It has evolved, meaning social justice or integral human development, or rather solidarity and the pursuit of the common good. More recently, our beloved Pope Francis added the concept of integral ecology as a way of evaluating human flourishing. Missio Invest is expanding this principle to the financial sector. Missio Invest aims to evangelise investment activities according to their practice and their effects. As we say, most of the world focuses almost exclusively on financial returns on their investments. But the Church believes that the stock market was made to improve human dignity, not just the bank balances of the well-off. Missio Invest believes that the moral measure of financial activity is its ability to lift up the lives and dignity of human beings, especially the most vulnerable. Coming back to Rwanda, how is Missio Invest growing church projects in Rwanda? Rwanda is the country with the largest amount of loans from Missio Invest. As of 2025, Missio Invest has extended 20 loans to Church institutions in Rwanda, totalling almost $9.63 million. These investments in agriculture and education are helping religious congregations and dioceses scale income-generating activities that serve communities and promote long-term sustainability. Further amplifying its reach, Missio Invest organised a high-level Catholic leadership conference in Rwanda, engaging cardinals, bishops, major superiors, and other Church leaders in discussions about the role of enterprise in advancing the Church’s social mission. All participants signed the “Kigali Declaration”, calling for a huge shift in the risks experienced by the Church in the South to the Church in the North, which can shoulder those risks. Through these efforts, Rwanda has become a model of growth and collaboration, demonstrating how faith-aligned impact investing can empower Church institutions to become agents of both spiritual and human development. Most church communities traditionally rely on donations. How is this trajectory changing for economic growth? There is an old sermon that can help us understand what is happening in Africa. It involves the Parish Priest during Sunday Mass, who stands before the people and says: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have enough money to fix the church roof. The bad news is that it is still in your pockets!” Missio Invest works in the same way. The Church in Africa has all the experts they need, with enough administrators to oversee their projects, as well as teachers, nurses and cleaners, and accountants. We have builders and technicians and engineers, and architects. They are lacking the resources they need to carry out their mission. The Church is a strong engine for job creation and economic growth. In some of the most remote communities, there will be a school, a clinic, and some form of food production. More than 98% of Missio Invest’s borrowers are repaying their loans. When there are difficulties, like we experienced during the COVID-19 crisis, we can adjust and help the priests and the sisters get through their difficulties. But they are the protagonists in their development, not the foreign aid workers who have started to retreat because of funding cuts. When the asphalt finishes and the streetlamps shine no more, there you will find a religious sister accompanying her people, day in and day out. Missio Invest trusts her and her life-long commitment, and after ten years of lending, we have no reason to think she will fail us or the people she serves. We know Africa has the most Christians in the world, at 631 million. How is Missio Invest targeting these? When the missionaries retired to their home countries, they left a growing and flourishing Church. As one Archbishop recently said at our meeting in Kigali, “The faith is flourishing, and we want to fish for ourselves!” The Church in Africa has tremendous capacity to absorb other kinds of financing, such as loans from Missio Invest. In 2024, the results spoke for themselves: $40M invested in local economies 33,000 people employed across Church-run enterprises 22,000 SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) educated 31,000 MFI (microfinance) borrowers supported $5.7M in crops produced 228,000 trees planted 92% of borrowers in agriculture use clean energy 3,383 Church-run schools served 6 million students 302 health institutions served over 11 million patients Over 15,000 hours of technical assistance delivered Farming is the backbone of most economies in Africa. How is Missio Invest promoting agricultural businesses? Missio Invest is founded on the importance of agriculture in the economy of Africa to provide food security and jobs. Currently, 42% of our loans are in the agriculture sector. We finance agriculture projects across a wide range of agricultural social enterprises—from staple crops to animal husbandry to high-value crops, such as coffee and tea. In Rwanda, for instance, we have also financed important investments in two Diocesan farms that produce high-quality wheat and potato seeds in collaboration with the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB). By producing more food and making it more accessible, agribusiness can play a vital role in reducing hunger and malnutrition, especially among vulnerable populations. And investing in agriculture creates direct jobs in farming, processing, packaging, and distribution, particularly for youth. Further, climate resiliency is key to address, so our financing helps mitigate the impacts of climate change on food production and improve the resilience of food systems, via regenerative agriculture practices such as crop rotations, drip irrigation, renewable energy, and tree planting. In 2024 alone, our borrowers planted over 228,000 trees. What does Missio Invest hope to generate from the Association of African Bishops (SECAM) that you’re attending from July 30 to August 4? At this 20th anniversary meeting, SECAM is boldly planning for the Church’s role over the next 25 years. In a way, it is posing the question of Africa’s role in the world and how it can take its rightful place. It cannot do it alone. Faith is not a solidarity activity; it’s a communal act. When we pray as Jesus taught us, we begin by saying “Our Father.” We profess and address that we all have a common ancestry, a common heritage, and a common Lord. We are called to receive the future that the Lord has planned for us together. Africa is open to faith, open to community, open to a peaceful future, and is also open for business! Now is not the time to abandon Africa with pious words that “Africa can stand by itself.” Yes, Africa can stand on its own two feet. But Africa must stand side by side with the rest of the world, as equals who look at each other with mutual respect. Your parting word for the Catholic community. His Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of this great country, recently spoke to the African youth, saying: “Africa needs to believe in the Giant that Africa is!” The President is encouraging us all to be believers in ourselves and one another. We must take this leap of faith into the future together. As someone whose surname is Small, it is very exciting to hear these words and to know that despite our names, our sizes, our race or gender, we all can become giants! For as the Bible tells us, God’s grace has the power to turn our weakness into strength, our hardships and difficulties into opportunities and successes. That when we feel small in the eyes of the world, we are giants in the eyes of our loving God. Let us heed the call to be the giants that the Lord is calling us to be.

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Featured: Faith, finance, and the future: How Missio Invest is empowering church-led growth in Africa