Funding Database
Here you can find selected donors, investors and lenders with different financing offers for African energy startups and their projects.
The database does not claim to be exhaustive, but contains the most important funding opportunities for African energy startups.
Funding Type
Through 1to4’s GiftVest® programme, early stage social businesses are provided with seed capital to start out on their journey to provide access to products and services for low-income families in developing countries.
- Debt, Grant
We invest in companies that have significant operations or impact within East Africa, West Africa, India, Pakistan, Latin America, or the United States. Our global investment focus sectors are Energy, Agriculture, Health, and Education. We invest in seed- to early-stage social enterprises and seek to invest in enterprises that provide a product or deliver a service that addresses a critical need for the poor.
- Debt, Equity
AECF (Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund) is a non-profit development organisation that supports innovative enterprises in the agribusiness and renewable energy sectors. We finance high risk businesses that struggle to access commercial funding; we are committed to working in frontier markets, fragile contexts, and high-risk economies where few mainstream financing institutions dare to go. Our world-class advisors help businesses with simple, bespoke and practical advice.
- Grant
AEV’s incubation and early stage investment model is a hands-on investment approach. AEV seeks innovative, high growth investment opportunities in businesses that have the potential to become significant regional players. AEV has developed an innovative business model backed by on-the-ground financiers and entrepreneurs who have a strong track record of building businesses in the region.
- Debt, Equity
We make minority equity, quasi-equity and debt investments in companies led by world-class teams taking innovative approaches to solving big problems in our sectors of focus. We look for highly commercial business models where increased scale creates increased impact.
- Debt, Equity
Akili believes that the future is African, and while the continent is full of entrepreneurs and hustle, it lacks some of the systems, processes, and business infrastructure. Akili empowers African entrepreneurs and operators, bringing them some of the best product, design and development expertise in the world, and the know-how to efficiently build new ventures through customer development, validation, experimentation, prototyping, recruiting, go-to-market, and sales.
- Debt, Equity
AlphaMundi provides debt and equity financing to scalable impact ventures across sectors including Financial Inclusion, Sustainable Food and Renewable Energy. AlphaMundi currently manages the SocialAlpha Investment Fund (SAIF) SICAV-SIF domiciled in Luxembourg, and the AlphaJiri Fund LP domiciled in Mauritius.
- Debt, Equity
Arigo Ventures focuses on early-stage investment opportunities using a mix of own funds and investor capital for equity in a myriad of industries. Whilst not a pre-requisite, we aim to partner with founders in the early stage of their initiative and find comfort with the rough imperfection of a new venture.
- Equity
We support early-stage startups with seed or Series A funding to de-risk and scale solutions focused on health and resilience, energy and materials, and work and prosperity. We strive to catalyze the growth of our portfolio through a combination of financial capital and in-kind support. We align our capital with outcomes, supporting both nonprofit and for-profit entities around the world.
- Equity, Grant
Bamboo Capital Partners is an impact investing platform which provides innovative financing solutions to businesses in emerging markets serving the needs of low- and middle income populations, thus catalysing lasting impact. We bridge the gap between seed and growth stage funding through a full suite of finance options – from debt to equity – which we activate unilaterally or through strategic partnerships.
- Debt, Equity
The main priority of the BESTSELLER Foundation is to help tackle one of the biggest challenges of our time – how to reduce waste, how to reuse and recycle valuable resources. And how to find economically viable opportunity in doing so – that also create better jobs and opportunities. These efforts are currently focused on providing early-stage capital for (aspiring) circular economy ventures in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Debt, Equity
We invest in seed-stage social enterprises serving impoverished communities throughout India and East Africa. As a Swiss-American non-profit all investment proceeds are re-invested over time. Our biggest strength is the breadth and quality of our own team. We have experience across asset management, venture law, sustainability, corporate restructuring, and investment banking industries.
- Debt, Equity
When investing, Blue Haven seeks to put capital to work in highly productive ways: helping mission-driven projects and companies achieve scale, supporting entrepreneurs whose innovations spur change, and partnering with other investors to accelerate economic progress.
- Debt, Equity
Charm was established to help mitigate two of the greatest challenges facing our generation: combating climate change and achieving universal access to clean and affordable energy. Our mission is to empower entrepreneurs in some of the toughest environments to scale their innovative solutions and make a meaningful difference for the world.
- Debt
D-Prize seeds new ventures scaling access to evidence-based poverty interventions. Many solutions to poverty already exist. The challenge is distributing to the people who need them most. Our work identifies effective interventions, then activates new entrepreneurs to scale delivery where distribution gaps exist.
- Grant
DWM combines the experience, rigor and resources of an established institutional investor with the passion and creativity of mission-aligned investing. The result is pioneering solutions that simultaneously address investors’ financial needs and the needs of the developing world.
- Debt, Equity
We invest in businesses that positively contribute to a more social and sustainable society and deliver long-term profitability. We work with entrepreneurs to mitigate potential risks related to environmental, social and governance matters, whilst creating value and social impact for the company and its communities. We work from our offices in Kenya, Tanzania and The Netherlands. DOB Equity is an evergreen fund with all proceeds from investments being reinvested.
- Equity
DOEN supports initiatives that accelerate the transition to a more sustainable society. Specifically, DOEN focuses on pioneers with a business approach. These initiatives have either successfully developed beyond proof of concept and are close to market introduction. Or they involve parties that bring together our ecosystem and/or strengthen the sector.
- Debt, Grant
We invest in early-stage organizations and are often their first institutional investor, as well as their first “outside” board member. We invest in a wide variety of sectors: our current portfolio includes organizations working both domestically and internationally, helping to provide critical access to healthcare, education, food security, social justice, water and sanitation, transparency and accountability, and shelter.
- Debt
elea invests in locally based entrepreneurial initiatives to fight absolute poverty in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. It is focused on start-up and growth financing for long-term, economically self-supporting organizations. elea either invests directly in social enterprises that strive for maximum social impact or in innovative entrepreneurial projects that are economically viable in the long-term.
- Equity, Grant