Our Recommendation
CHANCEN International went looking for the people its model did not reach. Working with the University of Groningen, Chancen studied applicants from the 2022 and 2023 Rwandan cohorts who qualified for an Income Share Agreement but were turned away because spots ran out. Those people are the closest thing to a natural control group this sector offers, and the findings are stark: only 28% are working or self-employed. 91% report negative impacts from not being selected, and those who did find work earn significantly less than Chancen graduates. Chancen has also launched what it describes as the first randomized controlled trial of an Income Share Agreement in a developing country context, with results due in 2027.
Chancen's own measurement framework, the Six Essential Questions, runs from who it serves through education completion, employment, economic mobility, organizational sustainability, and system change. Not one of the six reaches an ultimate outcome. Every headline figure, including the $60 of lifetime income per $1 invested, is an economic indicator that our framework treats as intermediate. The one ultimate outcome Chancen measures, confidence, sits outside its own framework and comes from a satisfaction-style survey.
We recommend Chancen. The method is serious and the evidence generation is ahead of nearly everyone we review. We would recommend it more strongly if the organization measured what the money is for.
CHANCEN International's Fierce Certification score is 90/100 points based on our criteria:
✔ Has Ultimate Outcome Goals (20 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Outcomes (15 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Outcomes (20 pts)
◪ Measures Intermediate and/or Ultimate Counterfactual (10 pts)
✔ Shows Continual Learning & Adaptation (25 pts)
The Social Problem
Each year 11 million young Africans enter the labor market, and 40% of them lack the skills employers need. Fewer than 9% of young people across Sub-Saharan Africa can access tertiary education at all, while 90% of jobs by 2030 are expected to require formal skilling. Chancen frames its work around an annual $40 billion education financing gap in Africa, a figure from the African Development Bank’s African Economic Outlook 2020.
The binding constraint is not ability and it is not the existence of training places. It is that financing does not exist for the people who need it. Conventional lenders require collateral, and a household living on less than $2 a day has none. The alternatives are worse: selling productive assets, or taking fixed-repayment debt that does not bend when a graduate cannot find work in the first year and that turns an education into a decade of default.
The exclusion is not evenly distributed. It falls hardest on young women, on rural youth, and on those in urban and peri-urban informal settlements, which is exactly the population Chancen's intake reflects. The consequence, in Chancen's own framing, is futures delayed by circumstance not ability.
The Solution
Chancen International is a financial inclusion nonprofit that finances tertiary education and technical training through Income Share Agreements. It launched in Rwanda in 2018 and now operates in Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana.
The product has four features that together define the model (how it works):
- No upfront tuition and no collateral. The student studies now and pays later.
- Repayment begins only above an income threshold. If you earn less, you pay less. If you earn nothing, you pay nothing.
- Repayments are capped for high earners. The product is not designed to maximize recovery from the most successful graduates.
- A clear end point. After a set number of years repayment stops, regardless of total paid, which is the explicit mechanism for preventing over-indebtedness.
The second half of the model is institution selection. Chancen conducts due diligence on partner education institutions covering historical alumni salary levels, proximity to the private sector, and post-study employment track record, and designs each agreement using a proprietary algorithm. Because Chancen is repaid from graduate income, its financial interest and the student's are aligned in a way that fee-based or grant-based models are not.
Key Outputs
- Members financed: 8,988 by the end of Q4 2025, nearly double the 2024 reach and up 34% from Q3 alone. Chancen reports over 10,000 students across four markets.
- Who they are: 78% from households under $2 per day, 85% rural or from urban and peri-urban informal settlements, 60% women.
- Markets: Rwanda since 2018, South Africa since 2022, plus Kenya and Ghana.
- Capital raised: UBS Optimus Foundation and co-funders committed $29 million to Chancen's Future of Work Fund, reported by the Financial Times. The Chancen Global Youth Strategy targets $130 million by 2029 to finance 60,000 young people.
- Portfolio performance: 97% of Members in good standing with repayments.
- Independent recognition: BlueMark awarded the Future of Work Fund a Platinum rating, the highest available, across strategy, governance, management, and reporting, and listed it on the BlueMark Fund ID Leaderboard.
Key Intermediate Outcomes
Employment and income (counterfactual). The University of Groningen study is the centerpiece. It tracked applicants from the 2022 and 2023 Rwandan cohorts who were eligible for an Income Share Agreement but were not selected because the number of spots was limited, and asked what happened to them (impact page).
| Measure | Non-beneficiaries | Chancen Members |
|---|---|---|
| Employed or self-employed | 28% | 73% one year after completion |
| Reported negative impacts from not being selected | 91% | Not applicable |
| Earnings among those employed | Significantly less than Chancen graduates | $199 per month average in Rwanda, 2025 |
The comparison is not randomized and selection was not random, so the two groups may differ in ways the study cannot fully control. But rationing by capacity instead of by merit is the closest thing to an exogenous assignment this sector produces, and Chancen went and measured it rather than pointing at its own graduation rate.
Lifetime income (counterfactual). Chancen reports $60 to $61 in lifetime income generated per $1 invested, based on the Rwanda counterfactual study, and publishes a conservative cross-check applying GiveWell's 4% discount rate methodology, removing inflation from income growth assumptions, and assuming a two to three year non-work study period. Mulago, a funder, describes the evidence as persuasive while stating it wants to see a closer counterfactual from the rigorous impact study now underway (Mulago).
Education completion and access (no counterfactual). Graduation rates of 93% to 94%, with attrition falling to about 1.6% in 2025. The 60 Decibels customer voice study, supported by the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, found that a majority of Members were accessing this type of financing for the first time and that a substantial share had no viable alternative route to study.
Key Ultimate Outcomes
Confidence (no counterfactual). 82% of Members report increased confidence to pursue new opportunities, from the 60 Decibels study. Confidence and sense of self-worth are ultimate outcomes. The figure is self-reported with no comparison group, and we were not able to locate the underlying report, so we report it as Chancen states it.
What is not measured. The gap here is structural. Chancen's own impact framework, the Six Essential Questions, asks who the learners are, whether they are completing high-quality education, whether they are securing meaningful employment, whether they are achieving lasting economic mobility, whether the model is sustainable and scalable, and whether the broader system is strengthening. Under our framework, completion, employment, and economic mobility are all intermediate, and the last two questions are about the organization itself. The framework never asks the question our training puts at the end of the chain: and then what?
The 60 Decibels study was commissioned to assess quality of life alongside education access and economic outcomes. We could not locate a quality-of-life result. The figure Chancen does publish from that study, satisfaction with the Chancen experience, measures how Members felt about the service. Nothing was found on hope, agency, mental health, or household wellbeing.
Continual Learning & Adaptation
Chancen is among the most deliberate evidence-builders we have reviewed, and it says so explicitly: it does not measure its own impact in isolation and continuously seeks validation through independent external evaluations, from customer voice studies to randomized controlled trials.
- It commissioned a study of the people it turned away. The Groningen non-beneficiary study is an organization deliberately generating the evidence most likely to complicate its own story.
- It launched the first randomized controlled trial of an Income Share Agreement in a developing country context, with the University of Groningen, focused on education and employment outcomes with particular attention to women. Results are expected in 2027. Under our training this cannot score until it is finished, but it is the right investment.
- It commissioned independent customer voice research. The 2024 60 Decibels study in Rwanda, supported by the U.S. Development Finance Corporation.
- It has two further studies in flight. A Kenya study with NORRAG, the Bertha Centre at the University of Cape Town, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and Volta Capital, running September 2025 to September 2026 as part of the Innovative Financing for Education to Leave No One Behind initiative. A multi-country Graduate Outcomes Study for 2026 to 2027 comparing graduate trajectories to a similar population at the point of application.
- It submitted its fund to independent accountability assessment, earning BlueMark Platinum across strategy, governance, management, and reporting.
- It publishes a conservative cross-check of its own headline number, applying GiveWell-style methodology that lowers its own headline figure.
- It reviews progress annually against the Six Essential Questions, which frame its impact dashboards and reports.
- It expanded deliberately. Rwanda in 2018, South Africa in 2022, then Kenya and Ghana, with the product design refined through a proprietary algorithm and institution-level due diligence.
Further Reading
- Chancen International homepage - Mission framing and headline figures.
- Chancen International, Our Impact - Published impact figures and outcome reporting.
- Chancen International, How it Works - The income share agreement model and repayment terms.
- Chancen International, About - Organizational background, history, and leadership.
- Chancen International, Q4 2025 Highlights: Closing the Year With Momentum - Quarterly performance and portfolio update.
- Chancen International, News, Press and Reports - Including the 2025 Impact Report and the 2023-2024 Impact Report.
- Mulago Foundation portfolio entry on Chancen International - Independent funder assessment of the model and scale.
- 100x Impact Accelerator portfolio entry - Independent accelerator profile.
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