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Pre-seed venture capital (VC) fund and accelerator Catalyst Fund has unveiled a $2 million investment into 10 startups building solutions to improve the resilience of climate-vulnerable communities in Africa.
This is the inaugural cohort of the new $30M VC fund of Catalyst Fund, anchored by financial sector development agency FSD Africa, aimed at supporting early-stage founders to develop technology that will make Africa more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Each of the 10 startups will be offered $100K of equity investments as well as $100K of hands-on venture-building support.
These companies will join Catalyst Fund’s existing portfolio of 61 startups across emerging markets and receive capital, bespoke and expert-led venture-building support, and direct connections with investors, corporate innovators and talent networks that can help them scale. Catalyst Fund’s portfolio companies have raised over US$640 million in follow-on funding to date, and currently serve more than 14 million individuals and MSMEs globally.
• Farm to Feed [Kenya]: a food supply chain company that is providing a digitally-enabled solution to food loss/waste. Their climate-smart solution focuses on providing a market for imperfect and surplus produce from farmers, contributing to food security and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
• Farmz2U [Nigeria, Kenya]: an agtech enterprise driving sustainable agriculture. Through Farmz2U, farmers can access personalized farming advice (especially on regenerative farming practices), affordable credit, quality and traceable inputs, and direct buyers for their harvest.
• Octavia Carbon [Kenya]: the Global South’s first Direct Air Capture (DAC) company that is building the world’s lowest-cost DAC hub. Octavia is currently building DAC machinery to capture carbon from the air for resale as either carbon dioxide or carbon credits to off-takers.
• PaddyCover [Nigeria]: works with established insurers and digital platforms to design and offer bespoke products via their platform that facilitates flexible insurance packages, including health, life and, in the future, index-based crop insurance. The offerings are built into the lifestyle touchpoints of the customer, either as a convenience or as complementary value-adds.
• Sand to Green [Morocco]: transforms deserts into cultivable land using agroforestry methodology and a solar-powered desalination system to design climate-smart regenerative farms.
• VAIS [Egypt]: a precision agtech startup committed to climate resilience and food security by providing data intelligence to farms via their FarmGATE application, which is powered by proprietary artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-based virtual field probing (VFP) technology, to enable better use of water and other farm inputs to produce better yields.
“At FSD Africa, we believe that by harnessing the power of tech, and specifically fintech innovation, we can help to spur the development of climate resilience solutions for Africa, thereby helping deliver on COP27’s core themes of adaptation and implementation,” said Juliet Munro, Director of Digital Economy at FSD Africa. “These companies are strong examples of the innovation we need to enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities across the continent.”
“COP27 in Egypt this year called for more private sector financing to fill the >$330B funding gap for adaptation and resilience by 2030. It also called for more local innovations to support communities in building resilience to climate impacts. The Catalyst Fund’s new cohort exemplifies what these innovative climate solutions for the most vulnerable could look like. We are also thrilled to be backing companies in Francophone Africa and Northern Africa for the first time. We intend to back many more startups like them across the African continent in the years to come,” said Aaron Fu, Partner at Catalyst Fund.
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