Viewpoint: How Africa Can Ride the Growing Wave of Climate Tech Investment
By Blaise Bayuo, Olamide Oguntoye
In VC alone, funding to climate tech grew five times faster than the wider industry between 2013 and 2019. And the surge has not stopped: in the first half of this year, start-ups focused on climate tech got more VC funds than they did in all of 2019. Added to recent announcements by the USA and UK to increase investment, there’s never been a better time to build the technologies we need to solve the climate crisis.
Despite this gold rush, however, activity is yet to echo through Africa. While close to 93% of climate tech investments went to the USA, China and Europe, Africa had only 0.2% of deals. Even the growing interest in Africa’s tech ecosystem has yet to translate into more action in this area. The recent announcement that Y-Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s foremost accelerators, was admitting its largest cohort of African start-ups was even disappointing in this regard. Of the 60+ African companies on their register, only a few are climate-tech-focused.
Photo courtesy of diema.
Source: The Africa Report (link opens in a new window)
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
