US/Japan Climate-Gender Innovation Collective for Africa

Background

Africa bears a disproportionate burden from climate change, despite contributing only 10% of global GHG emissions. The continent faces significant challenges, including limited financial resources, worsening social and economic issues like gender inequality and food insecurity, and insufficient climate finance. Local solutions exist, but businesses struggle to scale due to a lack of investment, support, and an enabling environment. Female entrepreneurs face additional barriers, receiving just 7% of venture capital funding despite the proven benefits of investing in women. To unlock their potential as drivers of sustainable economic transformation, African SMEs addressing climate change need tailored support to scale resilient and financially sustainable solutions.

About the Program

With support from the United States-Japan Foundation, this program addresses two of the most critical challenges of our lifetime, climate change and gender inequality, through knowledge exchange and collaboration among mentors from the U.S. and Japan, who offer expertise and support for the benefit of high impact African SMEs.

Through our program, we expect to provide support to 15 Kenyan climate-focused SMEs with 100 mentors (5 mentors per each entrepreneur) from the U.S. and Japan. Our expected results from the Program include: business growth, environmental and social impact, and partnership and ecosystem impact. In addition to the direct impact on the business (both financial and environmental/social), which can be both short-term and long-term, we expect to achieve broader ecosystem impact, which can be around new forms of partnerships developed between mentees and mentors, or among the mentors.

Objectives

Our overall objective for the Program is twofold:
1) to provide critical support to climate-focused African SMEs through high quality mentorship to bridge the gap in reaching a scalable phase; and 2) enhance the partnership between the U.S. and Japan towards sustainable development goals.

The proposed mentorship will open up opportunities for SMEs, with preference given to those with a gender-lens, to scale their impact on climate change by improving their commercial viability. Mentors from the U.S. and Japan will work together to provide support to the African businesses, strengthening their mutual commitment and understanding to collaborate towards a common goal.

Become a mentor!