Energise Africa - feasibility study for country and sector expansion

3d653d4b-7b48-4c3b-820b-1d786ec75625

Closed

Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£104,615

Jan. 1, 2022

March 31, 2022

Energise Africa is a UK crowdfunding platform, mobilising retail investments for climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We offer affordable, flexible finance to companies in emerging markets who struggle to access finance from traditional financial institutions who seem unwilling to innovate to meet the needs of the sustainable businesses of the future, and who create barriers to accessing finance through disproportionately high collateralisation requirements and interest rates.

With support from organisations such as FCDO and Good Energies Foundation, we develop innovative blended finance approaches to leverage private finance from thousands of crowd investors. We set an intentionally low minimum investment amount of £50 to make impact investing accessible to everyone, offering target returns of upto 6%. Our fintech the aggregates the crowd-investments into a single, easy-to-manage bond, making it a simple way for emerging market SMEs to access finance.

Since launching in 2016, we have raised **£25million+ for renewable energy companies**, across 162 bond issuances, from a **community of over 4,300 crowd-investors**. These investments have **enabled over 600,000 people to access clean, affordable electricity,** and all the life-changing benefits it brings, and **avoided 130,000+ annual tonnes of harmful CO2** from entering the atmosphere.

**Building on our innovations in blended finance to offer more risk-mitigated products, our objective by the end of 2023 is to:**

* **raise £100million+ in catalytic crowd-finance for climate action and the SDGs**
* **support 125+ emerging market SMEs with access to finance, enabling them to rapidly scale their reach and impact**

To achieve this ambitious objective, we plan to scale-up and offer flexible, affordable finance to companies across a wider range of countries (including South and Southeast Asia) and sectors (potentially to include mini-grids, clean cookstoves, biogas production, sustainable transport, and renewable energy in the agriculture value chain).

To capitalise on scoping work that we are currently undertaking, this Innovate UK backed feasibility study will support us to conduct stakeholder mapping, build new partnerships with trade and industry associations across a number of countries, and develop networks to enable a wide range of emerging market SMEs to access finance via our platform.

Lendahand Ethex Ltd (FRN: 776908), trading as ENERGISE AFRICA, is an appointed representative of ShareIn Ltd (FRN:603332), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investing on energiseafrica.com involves risk, including loss of capital, illiquidity, and returns are not guaranteed. Read the full risk warning on [https://www.energiseafrica.com/risk][0] for further information.

[0]: https://www.energiseafrica.com/risk