Ghana
Climate finance

SEED Practitioner Labs Climate Finance

This project engage leading finance-focused organisations and finance eco-system to co-create innovative climate finance products that increase financial flows to the missing middle of small and medium-sized eco-inclusive enterprises.

An initiative of SEED

Overview of the project

SEED Practitioner Labs Climate Finance engage leading finance-focused organisations, financial institutions, fintech experts, climate experts and sector experts to co-create innovative climate finance products that increase financial flows to the missing middle of small and medium-sized eco-inclusive enterprises. SEED Labs participants are empowered through ample collaboration and hands-on prototyping opportunities to turn major financing challenges into robust financial product prototypes that innovate the next generation of climate finance. The Practitioners Labs Climate Finance process has been kicked-off in Accra in April 2019 with five climate finance products in development by our Challenge Hosts: Stanbic Bank, GIZ, MDF Consultancy, MBC Africa and Wangara Green Ventures. These financial products for climate-smart enterprises could be showcased at the Climate Chance Summit and presented by SEED and the Challenge Hosts. To give some examples, one product is a mobile-enabled microinsurance product to protect smallholder farmers against climate-risk induced crop and harvest lost. Another product is a dual financing mechanism through a venture capital fund to provide long-term finance for solar enterprises in addition to asset financing by financial institutions to enable an effective establishment of a pay-as-you-go mechanism for example. The Practitioner Labs Climate Finance have already been successfully implemented in Uganda, Thailand and India and are currently implemented in South Africa as well. This allows to exchange on further best practice examples and encourage collaboration across countries.

Objective

Accelerating climate finance by a co-creating localised and innovative climate finance products.

Level of progress

implementation

Project timeline

01/02/2019

Quantitative results

Developing 5 innovative climate finance products for climate-smart enterprises – connecting more than 70 stakeholders including a range of climate finance experts, leading financial institutions (banks, MFIs, impact investors, DFIs amongst others), fintech experts and sector experts

Qualitative results

– supporting Ghana to achieve the NDCs and SDGs overall by encouraging local climate action
– strengthened local ecosystem and community building of climate finance innovators
– effectively combining financial and non-financial support for climate-smart enterprises to offer climate finance solutions that work and accelerate impact
– connecting global climate funds with much needed local solutions
– innovative and effective prototyping methodology developed by SEED that can easily be replicated in other African countries to develop further localised climate finance products

Financing

The International Climate Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety support the implementation of SEED activities (of which the Practitioner Labs Climate Finance are one programme) across Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, India, Indonesia and Thailand.

About the
organisation

SEED

Kathrin Kirsch
Enterprise Support Advisor
kathrin.kirsch@seed.uno

SEED was founded at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg by UN Environment, UNDP and IUCN as a global partnership for action on sustainable development and the green economy. SEED is based on the understanding that the promotion of social and environmental entrepreneurship is pivotal for environmentally friendly and socially inclusive development and poverty reduction.
We work directly with growing enterprises and aspiring entrepreneurs in our Enterprise Support programmes to strategise, optimise and award achievements in eco-inclusive entrepreneurship.
Complimentary to our direct Enterprise Support programmes, we offer programmes to build an ecosystem of supporters and advocators necessary to the success of growing enterprises. Our Ecosystem Building activities fortify a global network of local business development services providers and offer platforms for coordination between key local, national and international stakeholders around eco-inclusive entrepreneurship. As part of our Ecosystem Building activities, we are carrying out the SEED Practitioner Labs Climate Finance in Ghana, where we support financial institutions through our innovative prototyping methodology to co-create new climate finance products that support climate-smart SMEs in sectors such as agriculture or renewable energy.

Currently, 5 financial products are being developed that would be ready for showcasing at the Climate Chance Summit to provide inspiration and case studies of innovative and localised climate finance products.

Find them on
A project
in collaboration
  • Stanbic Bank

    Financial Institution

    Stanislaus Deh
  • GIZ

    Development organization

    Evans Maka