Invest Frontier

About InvestFrontier

Why fragile and frontier markets matter

Fragile and frontier markets are home to dynamic entrepreneurs, emerging businesses and local institutions with significant potential to drive innovation, create jobs and strengthen resilience. The opportunity in these markets is significant: Forum analysis has found that by 2050, more than one in three of the world’s workers will live in 70 of these frontier markets, yet they saw just 3% of the World’s FDI between 2015 and 2024. Unlocking this potential requires new combinations of capital, technology and collaboration models that can help promising solutions grow and scale.

Five Strategic Shifts

Every InvestFrontier solution, convening and partnership advances at least one of five shifts that are essential to transforming collaboration in fragile and frontier markets:

1. From external intermediaries to locally led delivery and capital

Strengthen local institutions, businesses, entrepreneurs and financial intermediaries so they can shape priorities, build markets and deploy capital.

2. From fragmented interventions to a collaborative ecosystem

Connect governments, local actors, business, finance, philanthropy and civil society through sustained partnerships around shared outcomes.

3. From grant financing to catalytic and smart finance

Combine grants, guarantees, insurance, patient capital and risk-sharing with appropriate commercial investment to make resources go further.

4. From seeing fragile and frontier contexts as aid recipients to seeing them as growth markets

Improve investment pipelines, market information and financing structures so responsible capital can reach viable enterprises and priority sectors.

5. From technology as an enabler to technology at the centre of sustainable transformation

Connect technology partners with governments and local organisations to expand responsible applications of digital payments, data, AI and digital trade.

Our two-pillar structure

Crisis Response

Bring humanitarian organisations, business, technology providers and funders together to improve crisis response. This work advances financing models and technology-driven solutions that strengthen delivery, support local capacity, and lay the ground for long-term investments.

Market Building

Identify practical pathways to scale private investment, particularly for local businesses and SMEs, and highlight successful collaboration across the investment continuum to enable sustained capital flows into priority sectors.

Solutions Portfolio from Brussels to Davos 2028

Between November 2026 and January 2028, InvestFrontier will advance a select set of partner-led solutions spanning local investment, crisis recovery, distributed energy, risk financing, digital payments, trade infrastructure and agricultural investment.

Partners are invited to join InvestFrontier, connect with the solutions being scaled, propose their own solutions, and amplify their work where it aligns with the sectors and priorities of those solutions.

Our Partners

InvestFrontier brings together over 100 partners, building on the work of the World Economic Forum Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative.

InvestFrontier Leadership Group 

A high-level Leadership Group composed of leaders from across the public, private and philanthropic sectors is guiding the effort of InvestFrontier.

Co-Chairs

Sheba Crocker

Managing Director, Global Communications Group, World Economic Forum


Hadja Lahbib

Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, European Commission

Members

Alexander De Croo

Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)


Anna Bjerde

Managing Director, Operations

Bridget Gainer

Chief Public Affairs and Policy Officer, Aon

Charlotte Slente

Secretary General, Danish Refugee Council

David Miliband

President and Chief Executive Officer, International Rescue Committee

Elisabeth Carpenter

Chief Strategic Engagement Officer, Circle

Faheen Allibhoy

Managing Director; Global Head, Multilateral Institutions and Development Banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co

Isaac Kwaku Fokuo

Founder of the Amahoro Coalition

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Acumen

Nicole Clifton

President, Social Impact and The UPS Foundation, UPS

Peter Laugharn

President and Chief Executive Officer, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Peter Maurer

President of the Board, Basel Institute on Governance

Sebastien Boyé

Co-Chief Executive Officer, I&P

Stephanie von Friedeburg

Global Head, Public Sector Banking, Citi

Tom Fletcher

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Fragile and Frontier Markets

We define fragile and frontier markets as i) countries included in the OECD States of Fragility list; and/or ii) World Bank Group International Development Association (IDA) eligible and IDA Blend countries for FY27. Both the OECD’s Extreme Fragility and High Fragility states from 2025 are included in this definition.

Part of the Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics

The Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics acts as the World Economic Forum's point of contact for key stakeholders – governments, international organizations and civil society organizations – and convenes them with the Forum’s business partners to advance cooperative solutions to critical global and regional challenges.

Join InvestFrontier

Together, we can unlock capital, transform cross-sector collaboration and drive growth and resilience where it is needed most.

Invest Frontier

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