Pollen Patrollers is a women-led agritech startup in Kenya tackling Africa’s pollination crisis through a smart, technology-driven platform. Their first product is an end-to-end bee hive management through smart hives and field support. To date, they’ve served over 3,200 beekeepers who have seen improvements in hive health, reduced colony loss, and increased honey income by 33%.
From this network of beekeepers, they offer farmers growing pollination-dependent crops with timely and precise on-farm pollination services. By deploying healthy bee colonies to farms at critical fruiting stages, Pollen Patrollers boost crop yields by up to 50% for smallholder farmers growing avocado, coffee, and other high-value crops. With AI-powered hive monitoring and optimal hive placement insights, the platform improves agricultural productivity while safeguarding essential pollinators across East Africa.
Zuhura Solutions is a Kenyan social enterprise transforming the livelihoods of East Africa’s 1.2 million street food vendors by replacing charcoal-based cooking with clean, modern alternatives. Their flagship innovation – the Halisi Trolley – is a hybrid solar- and bio-ethanol-powered cooking trolley that improves hygiene, cuts fuel costs, and enables longer operating hours. Vendors using the trolleys have reported 80–100% income growth.
Zuhura’s solution not only empowers street vendors, it also reduces reliance on charcoal – curbing deforestation, air pollution, and carbon emissions – while ensuring safer food preparation in urban areas. Currently operating in Kenya, the company has deployed over 15 trolleys and is scaling production to meet growing demand across the region.
Over the last five years, Songa Mobility has developed the Songa Platform. It is a solar powered, IoT enabled, EV logistics platform that unlocks market access for smallholder farmers. It consists of a network of containerized charging/swapping hubs, refurbishable Li-ion batteries, a digital platform, and electric three-wheeled vehicles adapted to rural African livelihoods.
Songa Mobility also inclusively promotes rural livelihoods and boosts climate resilience and food security through job creation, technical training and farmer group capacity building. In 2024 alone, Songa’s vehicles completed 5,328 trips, transporting 1.3 million liters of milk, and raised farmer and driver incomes by 30–40% through its innovative business model and digital platform, which serve to optimize operations and utilization of e-mobility assets.
Instollar is a cfor efficient, high-quality solar solution installations across Nigeria. With over 2,500 installations completed, a growing network of 1300+ registered installers, and partnerships with leading solar developers and OEMs, boosting technician income by 25% and reducing company installation costs by 30–40%.
Instollar is driving scalable, tech-enabled execution of clean energy projects in underserved markets. The company is now expanding into East Africa and Francophone West Africa markets to scale its impact and support the continent’s transition to decentralized, reliable clean energy.
Mbay Mobility is a two-step emobility fintech accelerating electric vehicle (EV) adoption and financial inclusion in West and Central Africa. First step, Mbay enables unbanked taxi and commercial drivers to upgrade to modern EVs through a lease-to-own contract, immediately boosting their incomes by 50%, and tripling them once the EV is paid off after 3 years. Second step, Mbay Mobility helps these drivers use their EVs as collateral, to unlock further financial services, like microcredit and microinsurance, drastically improving the quality of life of them and their families.
Currently operating in Senegal, where it has sold 25 EVs – each cutting carbon emissions by about 8 tons per year, or 70% less than traditional taxis – Mbay Mobility is aiming to replicate its solution across Francophone West and Central Africa, for a total of 33,000 EVs deployed by 2033.
EnerGrow finances productive-use appliances for micro and small businesses across Uganda and Kenya , enabling them to purchase income-generating tools such as fridges, welding equipment, carpentry machines, and agro-processing technologies that require electricity to operate. By partnering with mini-grid developers and national utilities, EnerGrow stimulates energy demand while helping entrepreneurs increase their incomes by around 50%.
As electricity access expands but consumption remains low, their model strengthens the economics of electrification and utility growth, and with an added pivot to add clean cooking to the mix, this will allow them to leverage blended finance, carbon revenue, and results-based subsidies. EnerGrow’s integrated approach, combining SME finance with energy demand stimulation, is designed to scale sustainably across East Africa.
Mega Gas is a Kenya-based cleantech startup addressing two critical challenges – harmful cooking fuels and plastic waste – through a scalable circular-energy solution. The company uses a thermal cracking process to convert plastic waste into clean cooking gas that is 50% cheaper and 25% more energy-efficient than conventional LPG. This innovation enables low-income households and small businesses to access affordable, reliable, and safer cooking energy while significantly reducing exposure to indoor air pollution and harmful gases.
Currently, Mega Gas distributes its fuel through a community kitchen model and operates five community kitchens, serving more than 10,000 customers each month and recycling substantial volumes of plastic waste, primarily sourced from informal settlements. By replacing charcoal, firewood, and other polluting fuel alternatives with clean, low-cost gas, the company is improving public health, advancing climate action, and offering a cost-effective, high-impact pathway to circular, low-carbon energy access across Kenya.
The company has received grant funding and recognition from partners such as The World Resources Institute, Echoing Green, and Kenya Community Development Foundation.
Lake Farms is strengthening food security and climate resilience in Zambia by transforming the country’s fish supply chain. With over 12 million Zambians lacking access to affordable, high-quality fish and wild stocks under pressure from overfishing, Lake Farms operates a vertically integrated model that combines sustainable Nile Tilapia farming with clean-energy cold storage and last-mile logistics.
Lake Farms also works with fishing communities to supply solar lighting & refrigeration; cooling infrastructure cuts spoilage by 40%, while fair pricing and reliable distribution enable small-scale fishers and women traders to earn 30–40% higher incomes.
By supplying fresh and frozen products to both rural and urban markets, Lake Farms supports equitable access to nutritious food while helping protect Zambia’s aquatic ecosystems.
Farm Warehouse supports smallholder farmers in Nigeria with access to agricultural equipment and markets through solar-powered minigrid hubs. Their model helps microenterprises purchase tools that are typically unaffordable and reduce reliance on expensive diesel fuel. Farm Warehouse has worked with 1,600 microenterprises, lowering their energy costs by 70% compared to diesel.
ICE Solar provides affordable and reliable solar energy to micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in Nigeria’s urban shopping complexes. Many businesses, such as salons, tailors, and food vendors, face unreliable grid access and high generator costs that limit productivity and income growth.
Partnering with landlords and market managers, ICE Solar installs centralized rooftop solar systems that power multiple shops at once. Smart metering tracks usage and enables flexible, utility billing packages, eliminating upfront costs for MSEs.
By reducing energy costs, cutting fossil-fuel dependence, and improving business reliability, ICE Solar supports resilient, cleaner, and more profitable urban enterprises across Nigeria.
