Impact investing — investment focused on fostering social or environmental goals — is playing an increasing role in East Africa, but skeptics claim that prioritizing social goals undermines financial ones, according to a WallStreetJournal blog by Matina Stevis.

East Africa is a global center for impact investing, according to a new report produced by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), Open Capital Advisors and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID).

Impact investors often find themselves co-investing alongside purely profit-driven firms. For example, Bridge International Academies, a well-known chain of privately owned, low-cost schools in Kenya and Uganda, boasts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as investors alongside the DFID impact fund.

That coexistence isn’t always easy, Bridge’s cofounder Shannon May told the Wall Street Journal in an interview earlier this year. Impact investors are often chasing different outcomes and using different measures for success than private-sector investors. That can become cumbersome for these companies, in terms of financial reporting.

It’s also tricky to measure success, when some investors are pursuing profits and others socially beneficial outcomes.

The impact-investing sector also faces a perception hurdle, with skeptics claiming that prioritizing social goals undermines financial ones, says Amit Bouri, CEO of GIIN.

Research published recently by GIIN suggests that is not the case, though. Its report on the study, released in May this year, said: “In aggregate, impact investment funds launched between 1998 and 2004—those that are largely realized—have outperformed funds in a comparative universe of conventional (private investment) funds.”

Read more at WallStreetJournal