World Skoll Forum

Musana Event 22nd April – Financing the First Mile: Blended Pathways for Rural Infrastructure.
Rural access is the economic “first mile” underpinning health systems, education, markets, and climate resilience. Yet small-scale rural infrastructure remains fragmented, underfunded, and rarely structured for scale. Fika, Green Empowerment, and Musana will share concise evidence on returns and cost curves, then explore how to structure first-mile infrastructure using blended finance approaches, combining grants, public budgets, concessional capital, tariffs, and community contributions. Together, we’ll map a practical capital sequence: what to fund first, how to pool and match funding sources, when public finance and user revenues step in, and how NGOs and philanthropy can catalyse and responsibly exit.