Why institutional mandates can't hold East African trade

The session produced the framing for the second paper: East African agricultural assets are excluded by how they are packaged, not by their risk. Every constraint we examined was a statement about form.

The obvious next question — what a compliant instrument would look like — became Session 07.

We turned to the second theme of the series. A pension fund does not decline East African agricultural trade because it has assessed it and found it wanting. It declines because the asset cannot enter the mandate at all.

This session worked through the specific constraints — minimum ticket sizes, credit rating requirements, currency and settlement rules, eligible-asset definitions, and the operational reality of custody — and asked which of them are genuinely binding and which are conventions that a well-designed instrument could satisfy.

The conclusion was that most of these constraints are about form rather than substance, which is precisely what makes them addressable.

• How an institutional mandate is actually written
• Ticket size, rating, and eligible-asset constraints
• Currency, settlement and custody in practice
• Which constraints are binding and which are convention
• Open discussion