Village Capital has announced the conclusion of the Empowering Sustainable Entrepreneurship Africa (ESEA), a three-year initiative established to strengthen locally-led entrepreneurial ecosystems and expand pathways to capital for climate startups across Africa.
Village Capital has partnered Norad – the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation to run ESEA, which was designed around a core belief that entrepreneurs do not scale in isolation.
Through ESEA, Village Capital worked with 14 locally-led ecosystem builders across Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania to strengthen their organisations and test a co-delivery model for founder support. Building on this foundation, it partnered with five ecosystem builders in 2025 to co-deliver investment-readiness programmes for 150 climate startups across the five markets.
As the initiative concludes, Village Capital has deployed US$500,000 in grant funding to 32 startups addressing critical sustainability challenges across the continent. The largest share of funding was directed toward climate adaptation startups, which received US$225,000. Food security startups received US$125,000, blue economy startups received US$100,000, and renewable energy startups received US$50,000.
“At Village Capital, we’ve learned that the challenge isn’t a lack of entrepreneurial talent. Too often, the challenge is that the systems around entrepreneurs are not designed to help promising startups access the networks, resources, and capital they need to grow,” said Nakami Walunywa, regional director for Africa at Village Capital.
“ESEA gave us an opportunity to test what happens when you work through local organisations that are deeply embedded in their markets. We saw how local knowledge, trusted founder relationships, and ecosystem intelligence can
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