Investing in Innovation

Kenya Climate Innovation Centre to raise $55m to scale up climate solutions in 10 African markets

Africa receives about a quarter of the climate finance it needs each year. Kenya Climate Innovation Centre has spent 14 years incubating more than 3,500 climate enterprises, has opened that pipeline to outside investors through its new Founders Collective, and is raising $55 million to scale up impact in at least 10 African countries by 2030.

Kenya Climate Innovation Centre has operated from Nairobi since 2012, backing enterprises in agriculture, waste management, water, renewable energy, and forestry. Its work has created 57,517 jobs and drawn $63 million of outside finance into the enterprises it supports.

Five criteria decide which enterprises get KCIC backing. A project must cut emissions or help communities adapt to climate change; it must address a real gap in the market; it must carry an innovation, whether a new technology, a new business model, or a new way of doing things; it must have customers willing to pay; and its founders must commit to a governance system. A complete governance system can come later, Murabula said, but founders must sign up to build one through what KCIC calls its investment readiness programme.

Once funded, market access separates the enterprises that grow from the ones that stall. "The real engine for scaling is what we call market access," says Joseph Murabula, CEO of KCIC. He breaks it into three parts: a product good enough to win public acceptance, a mark of quality from a standards authority in Kenya or in the export market, and certification that the product is fit for purpose. Selling into the EU adds certificate-of-origin and traceability requirements on top, he said.

The second condition for growth is funding, and that follows governance. Investors look for proper records validated by auditors, and for a board of directors that holds ultimate responsibility and delegates day-to-day decisions to a management team, Murabula said, rather than a founder making every call alone.

Green at Mind staff finishing a batch of cookstoves at the company's workshop in Turkana County, Kenya. Credit: Green at Mind.

Green at Mind: Growth to 2,000 households with KCIC Mentorship

One business success story from the KCIC model is Green at Mind, a clean cooking company in Turkana County that started in 2021 on a loan from a savings group and now employs 23 people. Founder Vincent Ubeling collects scrap metal from dealers and mechanics and turns it into cookstoves, and presses smokeless briquettes from food and farm waste to fuel them. "We transform upcycled drums and plain metal sheets into efficient cookstoves that use clean fuel and cook food in half the time of traditional open fires," he said. The briquettes cost less than charcoal in local markets, and the company sells through 62 local distributors, with a "stoves library" that lends a stove to schools and institutions for five days before they decide to buy. Eight in 10 buy, Ubeling said.

Hassan Ali, an early customer in 2023, became a distributor in Kakuma and has sold more than 380 stoves on his own testimony. The company has now produced more than 5,800 stoves and reached more than 2,000 households in Turkana, with its Relief Double Stove in use in Kiambu and West Pokot as well. Of its 23 staff, 95% are under 35 and 68% are women, and the whole assembly line is staffed by women. "Families report cleaner air in their homes, less time spent collecting wood, and savings on fuel costs," Ubeling said. A partnership with APA Insurance gives customers micro-insurance of up to 20,000 Kenyan shillings (about $155) in income replacement.

KCIC took Green at Mind through its SWIFT programme for waste-management enterprises, run with the IKEA Foundation, which provides mentorship, business training, and a route into national policy discussions. "The technical assistance we have received from KCIC has been invaluable in exposing us to various stakeholders across the country, opening up market and funding opportunities that we would not have been able to access on our own," Ubeling said. He has set a target of 100,000 users within two years and plans to replicate the model in other African countries.

The Founders Collective keeps KCIC's pipeline open to investors

KCIC launched the Founders Collective on 31 July 2026 as a permanent platform for the enterprises it has incubated over 14 years. For the enterprises it provides mentorship, investment readiness support, market links, and business intelligence after their formal programmes end. "While programmes have defined timelines, enterprise building rarely follows the same calendar," Murabula said at the launch. For an investor it provides three things: a pool of enterprises that have already passed KCIC's five screening tests and been taken through its investment readiness work, so they arrive with audited records and a functioning board; KCIC's own knowledge of each business, built over years of programme support; and an introduction to the founders. "Through that platform we are connecting with investors who can then be given opportunity to fund these enterprises," Murabula said. An investor coming through the Collective skips the search and the early-stage risk that KCIC has already carried. "We've already managed the startup risks," he said. "So all you need to do is worry about the growth and scaling risk."

The other routes run through KCIC's own programmes. Investors can fund incubation of ideas and early-stage technologies, which Murabula describes as building the pipeline for future years, or come to Kenya and build their own pipeline on the ground. He places Kenya among the top innovation ecosystems in Africa, alongside South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria.

KCIC's $55 million strategy moves beyond incubation

The launch of the KCIC 4.0 strategy in 2025. Credit: Kenya Climate Innovation Centre.

KCIC adopted a new strategy in 2025, which it calls KCIC 4.0, and changed its vision to sustainable enterprises and climate-resilient communities. "Incubation alone cannot scale enterprises," Murabula said. The strategy adds finance, markets, policy, research, and community resilience to enterprise support, and its financing requirement to 2030 is $55 million: $18 million in direct finance to enterprises, $11 million for market systems and policy work, $3 million for community climate resilience, $20 million for a revolving fund, and $3 million for KCIC's own capacity. The fund is planned to grow to $50 million beyond 2030. KCIC has hired Total Impact Capital to structure the fund as a blended finance facility that can take concessional debt or repayable grants alongside grants, and to manage the investment process. The firm, founded in Maryland in 2010 with an office in Nairobi, structured the Transform Health Fund and piloted Nyala Venture, a pan-African fund of funds anchored by FSD Africa Investments.

KCIC has a direct presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and runs work in Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria without one, Murabula said. Its targets for 2030 are a presence in at least 10 African countries, a further 12,000 enterprises supported, and 100,000 green jobs created.

KCIC seeks grant funders, lenders, and direct investors

Murabula's advice to organisations that have lost donor income is to stop relying on grants alone. He names five alternatives: co-creating programmes with the donors that remain, blended finance in which a small grant draws in larger commercial capital, repayable grants returned to the funder over time, results-based financing paid against verified outcomes, and paid professional services. The KCIC revolving fund is built on the second of those. "That's part of the reason why the KCIC revolving fund is being set up as a blended finance facility," he said.

KCIC is open to capital in three forms: grants for incubation and acceleration, concessional debt or repayable grants into the revolving fund as it moves toward its first $20 million, and direct investment into the enterprises on the Founders Collective that have already reached commercial scale. "Kenyans are consistently coming up with good innovations that provide opportunity for aligned investors," Murabula said.

Institutions in this article: Kenya Climate Innovation Centre, Green at Mind, Total Impact Capital, IKEA Foundation, APA Insurance, Climate Policy Initiative, FSD Africa.