MCE Social Capital
MCE Empowering Sustainable Agriculture Fund

Founded in 2006, MCE Social Capital is one of the most experienced impact-first, social lenders in the market. MCE has focused on providing debt to both high performing financial service providers (FSPs), as well as small and growing businesses (SGBs) throughout the Global South. Over almost two decades of work, MCE has deployed over $300M in financing. The MCE model has historically relied on philanthropic guarantors that enabled its own borrowing from more commercial lenders. These guarantors covered all principal losses incurred by the portfolio allowing investors to be comfortable lending in these non-traditional areas. The MCE Empowering Sustainability Agriculture Fund (MESA) was the firm’s first investment fund vehicle launched outside of the guarantor model, a strategic shift that Ceniarth had long supported. The MESA fund continues to focus on lending to FSPs and SGBs with a particular emphasis on the climate resilience of smallholders, as well as specifically empowering women through agriculture. Ceniarth was proud to make a $3M commitment to the junior, subordinate tranche of this fund allowing MCE is raise a significant amount of senior debt for the vehicle. The fund closed oversubscribed in October of 2023 with $41.6M in capital from a leading set of impact-first investors that included the U.S. DFC, FMO, Visa Foundation, ImpactAssets, and Blink CV.