A Regenerative Investment Engine

South Africa’s food and agriculture economy is a mirror of global inequality: vast potential concentrated in the hands of a few, while ecological and human systems edge toward collapse. Worth over £34 billion and employing nearly 800,000 people, the sector produces enough food to feed the country, yet 11% of households still experience hunger, and more than half of adults are overweight or obese, symptoms of an economy that delivers calories but not nutrition. The deeper issue is not productivity, but the logic of wealth itself: how value is created, extracted, and circulated within the food system.

Our hack addresses the disconnection between the flows of capital and the needs of the real economy. On one side sits commercial investment, which treats food and agriculture primarily as a source of export revenue. Nearly 90% of the country’s food is produced by only 40,000 commercial farms, while over two million smallholder households remain locked out of markets and finance. Investors channel funds into high-return, export-oriented assets, such as wine, citrus, nuts, whose profits flow upwards and offshore. Very little capital is directed toward restoring degraded land, developing local processing capacity, or improving domestic nutrition. Only 14% of South Africa’s land is arable, and more than 60% of its freshwater is consumed by agriculture, yet soil fertility and water retention continue to decline each year. The current financial operating system rewards extraction, not regeneration.

On the other side sits philanthropic and development capital, which in theory should counterbalance this dynamic, but in practice often reinforces it. Regulations governing public-benefit organisations and corporate social investment (CSI) restrict philanthropic capital to narrow, mechanistic service-delivery models: short-term projects that provide meals or inputs without addressing structural barriers. Large corporations are legally required to contribute to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), but implementation is often symbolic: funds are created for compliance purposes, and actual spending remains optional. As a result, billions of rand circulate nominally in the name of transformation while very little reaches the systemic roots of inequity.

Additionally, traditional models of giving dominate South African philanthropy. Most high-net-worth individuals give ad hoc, motivated by personal relationships or crisis response rather than long-term strategy. Corporate philanthropy focuses on visible outputs, number of meals served, jobs created, schools supported, because these are measurable and compliant. The result is a fragmented, transactional landscape that values immediacy over impact and visibility over transformation.

The narrative imperative is equally distorted. Political sensitivities and an entrenched focus on job creation have crowded out systemic thinking. Agriculture is framed as an employment problem rather than as the foundation of ecological and economic renewal. Investors often perceive farming as a private, self-contained business sector rather than a public good. As one financier told us, “Farmers have so much cash; they can figure this out themselves with the commercial banks.” This narrative blinds the system to the structural collapse already underway: between 1993 and 2017, South Africa lost more than half of its commercial farms; land degradation now affects an estimated 60% of agricultural land; and rural livelihoods continue to erode under the combined pressure of rising input costs, climate shocks, and debt.

These failures of imagination as much as of design reveal a deeper truth: capital architecture determines possibility. As long as finance is structured for extraction, regeneration will remain underfunded. As long as philanthropy is governed by risk aversion and compliance rather than trust and partnership, it will continue to address symptoms rather than causes. And as long as wealth remains unaccountable to the ecosystems and communities that generate it, inequality will compound.

South Africa is now at a pressure point. Commercial capital pursues short-term profit abroad; philanthropic capital remains trapped in outdated compliance frameworks; and the gap between the two is widening. This divergence leaves the country’s £34 billion food economy dangerously unprepared for the future: ecologically fragile, nutritionally inadequate, and socially unstable.

Our challenge is to reprogram the financial operating system that underpins these failures. We see an opportunity to build a new form of capital infrastructure that bridges the space between investment and philanthropy: capital that is catalytic, patient, and regenerative by design. This means creating financial mechanisms that circulate value rather than extract it; that hold wealth accountable for the health of land, people, and ecosystems; and that reward restoration and shared prosperity instead of short-term gain.

Inanna’s role is not simply to deploy funds. We act as an orchestrator of enabling conditions, weaving together the ventures, intermediaries, and institutions that form the living root system of a regenerative economy. Through our Regenerative Investment Engine, we aim to demonstrate how catalytic capital can de-risk and attract other forms of wealth; how steward-owned structures can embed accountability and trust; and how the alignment of financial and ecological time horizons can unlock long-term resilience.

This is the systemic problem our project seeks to address: the misalignment between the logic of wealth and the logic of life. By redesigning how capital flows into food and agriculture, turning wealth into a regenerative force, we seek to prove that finance itself can become a living system: one that nourishes rather than depletes, circulates rather than concentrates, and restores the foundations of prosperity for generations to come.

We are prototyping a catalytic, evergreen, steward-owned investment engine that orchestrates capital into Africa’s regenerative food economy: funding the root systems that align wealth with ecological and social renewal.

1. The opportunity: reprogramming how wealth flows

The global financial operating system is optimised for extraction. Wealth compounds upward; risk is externalised to communities and ecosystems. In food and agriculture, this logic manifests through short-termism, speculative exits, and capital that rewards depletion over regeneration. Traditional venture capital structures are designed to generate exponential returns within fixed time horizons and are fundamentally misaligned with the timescales of ecological recovery, social inclusion, and systemic transformation.

Our project seeks to reprogram these financial logics. We are designing an investment mechanism that treats wealth as a regenerative force rather than an extractive one, a structure through which value circulates, replenishes, and compounds across natural, social, and financial dimensions. We call this a Regenerative Investment Engine.

2. What we are building

The Engine is a new capital architecture: an evergreen, steward-owned structure that channels patient, catalytic finance into regenerative food and agriculture ventures. Instead of fixed fund cycles, it operates through continuous circulation: capital flows in, is deployed, generates regenerative returns, and is reinvested. By embedding stewardship and participatory governance, the Engine decentralises financial decision-making, giving communities, founders, and workers a voice in how capital behaves.

The Engine rewards what we call “wealth regeneration”, not accumulation. Returns are distributed through revenue-sharing, reinvestment, and mission-aligned liquidity events such as founder, employee or community buybacks. This design allows wealth holders to remain accountable for the impact of their capital over time, aligning incentives with stewardship rather than speculation.

We are embedding these principles into the structure from the outset through steward-ownership to ensure that governance, profits, and decision rights remain anchored to mission and community, not shareholder exit. The Engine will therefore function as a living system within the economy: capable of adapting, learning, and regenerating.

3. Our theory of change

We believe that when wealth is held to account for life, capital can become a force for regeneration.

Our theory of change rests on three interlinked mechanisms:

1. - Rewiring incentives: replacing extraction and exit with circulation and stewardship;

2. - Field-building: weaving ventures, funders, and institutions into a connected ecosystem that funds the “roots” of change—soil health, community infrastructure, and inclusive participation;

3. - Demonstration: prototyping and documenting a viable alternative to conventional venture capital in real-world conditions.

4. - Collective learning: testing, documenting, and sharing insights with the broader Wealth Hack cohort to contribute to a global conversation on regenerative finance.

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   Through this project, we aim to demonstrate that regenerative finance is not just ethically necessary but also economically resilient. When investments restore ecological and social value, they also de-risk themselves over time.

4. What the project will do
The project will unfold through two focused sprints, designed to move from collective inquiry to tested prototype, building the technical, relational, and institutional foundations for a regenerative investment mechanism in Southern Africa.

Sprint 1 – Orchestrating the ecosystem: can we align the field around a blueprint for systemic investment?
This sprint will test whether a coherent field of regenerative investors, ventures, and advisors can be built around a shared systemic vision. We will convene wealth holders, legal experts, and regenerative ventures to validate our existing system mapping and investment entry points, and to test appetite for evergreen, steward-owned investment in Southern Africa.

We will also run a learning circle that brings together South African wealth holders, agrifood investors, and mission-driven ventures who are not yet connected to global regenerative movements. The circle will cultivate shared language, trust, and intent—growing new social and conceptual “mycelium” among actors who hold the levers of transformation but often operate in silos. The goal is to identify the relational, cultural, and policy enablers of a regenerative investment ecosystem and lay the groundwork for the structural design phase.

Sprint 2 – Designing the mechanism: what would an evergreen, steward-owned investment structure look like?
Building on the insights from Sprint 1, this phase will develop the capital blueprint for an evergreen, steward-owned investment structure that aligns capital performance with regenerative outcomes. We will work with legal and financial partners to prototype the instrument design, investment processes, and governance model that enable capital to circulate regeneratively rather than extractively.

Through facilitated co-design sessions, we will convene investors, founders, and intermediaries to co-develop investment principles that reflect the realities and constraints of Southern Africa. We will also run simulations to stress-test the design in practice, examining how liquidity, risk, and accountability can function in a regenerative, non-extractive framework.

Together, these sprints will deliver:

• - A validated systems map of the regenerative investment ecosystem in Southern Africa;

• - A shared language and investment principles co-created with wealth holders and practitioners;

• - A prototype design of an evergreen, steward-owned investment structure;

• - A learning brief capturing insights for replication and field-building beyond South Africa.

Through this process, each sprint qill redistributes expertise and agency: wealth holders learn from practitioners on the ground, and local ventures help redefine what investable regeneration looks like. Insights from each sprint will be shared openly with the Wealth Hacker cohort and wider ecosystem, turning our process into a collective learning journey rather than a closed design exercise. As a whole, we will move from isolated experimentation toward an orchestrated field of regenerative finance, proving that systemic investment can take root in the Global South.

5. How we will measure success

Our evaluation framework is grounded in the Four Returns model, adapted to reflect the scope and learning nature of this prototype phase. Each return represents a different dimension of progress toward a regenerative financial operating system.

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  - Financial return: demonstration of viable, non-extractive financial design. By the end of Sprint 2, we expect to have a blueprint and tested simulation of cash-flow structures—showing that patient, circulating capital can sustain itself through revenue-sharing, reinvestment, and mission-aligned liquidity.

• - Natural return: evidence that the proposed structure enables investments that regenerate rather than deplete living systems. Through engagement with regenerative ventures in Sprint 1, we will map how the Engine’s design could measurably improve soil health, water resilience, and biodiversity once implemented.

• - Social return: deeper collaboration and shared purpose among the ecosystem. We will track participation and engagement in the learning circle, co-design sessions, and simulations, as well as qualitative shifts in trust, understanding, and alignment between wealth holders, investors, and regenerative practitioners.

• - Inspirational return: visible mindset and narrative change among wealth holders and institutions. Success will be reflected in new commitments to regenerative finance, public articulation of evergreen principles, and early adoption or replication of the Engine’s design by peers in the field.

Ultimately, success for this phase means that a community of practice emerges around systemic, regenerative investment in Southern Africa, one capable of carrying this work beyond the pilot. We will track our contribution to field learning: the extent to which peers, funders, and practitioners engage with, adapt, or replicate our framework. By the end of the project, we aim to have a validated design, a network of committed partners, and a shared belief that wealth can and must regenerate.

6. Why Inanna

Inanna operates as a systemic investing studio dedicated to transforming food and agriculture across Southern Africa. Our team combines lived experience from across Africa’s food systems with deep financial and policy expertise, bridging global capital flows with local realities and leadership.Our advantage lies in our dual fluency: we understand the mechanics of both the philanthropic and investment worlds, and we can speak to wealth holders, institutional investors, and local entrepreneurs in equal measure. We are embedded in the systems we aim to change and are connected to policy networks, agrifood entrepreneurs, and international funders who are seeking proof that regeneration can scale.

7. The systemic impact

The Engine is designed as a prototype of a new financial operating system. Its impact extends far beyond the ventures it finances. By introducing new governance, liquidity, and accountability norms, it will influence how wealth holders engage with the real economy. It will show that:

• - Philanthropy can become catalytic, not charitable;

• - Investment can be regenerative, not extractive;

• - Stewardship can replace ownership as the core principle of finance.

In the longer term, we envision this mechanism evolving into an open, replicable framework for other regions and sectors, demonstrating how finance can serve as the circulatory system of regeneration rather than depletion.

The project demonstrated that it is possible to reprogram how wealth flows into real economies by building the foundations of a regenerative investment field in Southern Africa. Through two sprints, one focused on ecosystem orchestration and the other on structural design, we generated concrete outputs, tested key assumptions, and catalysed new relationships between wealth holders, practitioners, and regenerative ventures.

1. A validated blueprint for systemic, regenerative investment

We co-develop a Regenerative Investment Engine—a catalytic, evergreen, steward-owned model that aligns financial performance with ecological and social outcomes. The blueprint articulates the design principles, governance model, and cash-flow architecture for a new generation of regenerative finance vehicles.
It provides a tangible alternative to conventional funds by integrating continuous circulation, revenue-sharing, and mission-aligned liquidity.

2. An emerging community of practice around regenerative finance

We convened a diverse group of wealth holders, founders, intermediaries, and field-builders into a connected ecosystem. These relationships have seeded a community of practice committed to rethinking how capital behaves.
Participants are continue to meet informally, share opportunities, and explore joint ventures.

3. Tested design tools for regenerative investment

The team produces a set of practical design tools to enable replication:

• - A systems map outlining leverage points in the agri-food investment ecosystem;

• - A step-by-step guide for running ecosystem sprints and participatory design circles;

  • - Simulation templates for modelling regenerative cash-flow structures and liquidity events.
    
    These tools will have been shared with the cohort and other field partners to support further experimentation.
    
    4. Demonstrate appetite for steward-owned, evergreen structures

    Prior to this project, there is limited understanding of or interest in alternative ownership and liquidity models among South African investors. Through participatory design and simulation workshops, we will have tested appetite and feasibility for stewardship-based models.
    

  • The process will have surfaced a strong willingness among next-generation wealth holders and mission-driven investors to explore patient, circular capital as a viable complement to traditional venture or private equity structures.
    

  • 4. Contribution to the global field of regenerative finance

    The project will produce a learning brief and case study documenting the process, insights, and design prototypes. This was shared within the Wealth Hack cohort and circulated among networks of regenerative finance practitioners in Africa, Europe, and the U.S.
    
    Inanna’s participation has positioned Southern Africa as an emerging node in the global movement to recode wealth for regeneration. The project demonstrated that the principles of stewardship, circular capital, and systemic investing are transferable and adaptable to African realities.