The State of Climate Innovation in Africa

Climatetech is now the largest category of venture funding in Africa, accounting for nearly 40% of all disclosed investment in 2025 and surpassing fintech for the first time. But the $6.35bn raised across 780 companies since 2016 tells you less than it appears to.

The top 10 companies have raised as much as every other climatetech company combined. Adaptation solutions, despite being the more pressing need across much of the continent, attracted just 16% of funding compared to 84% for mitigation.

These gaps persist because African climatetech is not one market. A solar company scaling proven assets across borders and a founder testing a climate-resilience solution at pre-seed are operating under completely different conditions, accessing different types of capital, and facing different constraints. Treating them as part of the same story produces a misleading picture.

To address that, we built a new taxonomy organising the ecosystem into 8 clusters and 18 applications, and applied the Carlota Perez techno-economic framework to assess where each sits in its development. The result is a more granular view of where capital is flowing, where it is not, and why.

What the data shows:

• $6.35bn raised across 780 companies between 2016 and 2025
• Climatetech now accounts for ~40% of all disclosed venture funding in Africa, overtaking fintech
• The top 20 companies account for 60% of all capital deployed since 2016
• Women-only founding teams received less than 1% of climatetech funding
• Adaptation solutions attracted 16% of funding, compared to 84% for mitigation
• Debt and hybrid instruments now account for close to half of all climatetech funding by value
• 20 disclosed exits between 2018 and 2025, with 15 of those in the Energy cluster

Who this report is for:

The analysis is relevant to investors deploying capital into the sector, development finance institutions assessing where concessional capital is most needed, founders navigating the fundraising landscape, and policymakers considering where intervention can accelerate market development.

This report was produced in partnership with Catalyst Fund , FSD Africa , and BFA Global, with funding data support from Africa: The Big Deal .

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