Climate Tech Capital Returns as Africa’s Scaling Gap Widens

The conversation around climate tech in Africa has grown more grounded. Not less ambitious, but more honest about friction. At the Climate Tech and Investment Summit, the session titled What on Earth Just Hit Climate Tech — And Why We’re Still Building avoided grand narratives. The tone stayed practical. Funding numbers were mentioned, yet the real discussion sat underneath them.

Climate investment on the continent rose to about $1.1 billion after a weaker period, with climate and energy attracting more than $200 million. Those figures sound reassuring until you listen closely to how founders and investors describe the present moment. Capital has returned, but its shape does not always match the work being done.

The gap between invention and deployment has become harder to ignore.

Neanda Salvaterra, moderating the discussion, framed the conversation around continuity rather than disruption. Builders are still building. The question is what kind of ecosystem allows that work to move beyond demonstration and into systems that last.

Funding recovery without structural comfort

Lucretia Chopera, Africa Deal Flow Manager at Katapult Ocean, spoke about climate investment with measured optimism. Her perspective carried the tension many funds now face. Climate ventures increasingly sit beyond early experimentation, yet they still require forms of capital that traditional venture structures struggle to accommodate.

Katapult Ocean’s portfolio includes 91 opportunities globally, with only 4 on the continent. The explanation was not a lack of founders or ideas. Instead, it reflected longer commercialization cycles and fragmented markets. Climate businesses often generate value through infrastructure, environmental outcomes, or supply chain improvements rather than immediate software margins.

Energy and mobility continue to attract larger portions of funding because revenue models are easier to understand. Solar installations produce measurable returns. Electric mobility services show predictable demand curves. By contrast, biodiversity finance or agricultural systems depend on outcomes that unfold slowly and across many actors.

Investors understand the importance of these sectors. Conviction alone does not shorten timelines.

The pilot economy and its limits

Luvo Gugwana, founder of Green Arch Innovations, described a familiar pattern across climate ventures on the continent. Local solutions frequently outperform imported technologies because they respond to real conditions on the ground. Yet many remain trapped in pilot stages.

Grant funding supports experimentation. Expansion requires a different kind of financing. That transition remains thinly supported.

Gugwana’s work with modular greenhouse systems connected to farm management platforms illustrates the problem. Farmers gain clearer visibility into output and financial performance. Investors gain predictability. Still, scaling such systems requires capital tied to physical deployment rather than rapid user growth. Infrastructure demands patience, and patience sits uneasily within investment cycles shaped by faster sectors.

The result is an ecosystem where successful pilots accumulate while large scale adoption arrives slowly.

Biodiversity, finance, and the problem of distance

Yasha Portnoy, CTO and co-founder of EarthAcre, approached climate tech from another angle. Nature finance exists in meaningful volumes, yet communities responsible for conservation often see little direct benefit. The issue is less about funding totals and more about how money moves through the system.

Investors struggle to verify environmental outcomes across dispersed landscapes. Communities struggle to see how ecological stewardship converts into income. Trust weakens at both ends.

Technology offers partial answers. Environmental data collection, AI-based monitoring, and new verification tools make biodiversity measurable in ways that were difficult a decade ago. Even so, the underlying challenge remains institutional. Markets are still learning how to price ecosystems without oversimplifying them.

Climate tech companies operating in this space are not only building products. They are building financial relationships that did not previously exist.

Food innovation and industrial timelines

Pieter Labuschagne, Head of Tech at Newform Foods, brought the discussion into food systems through cellular agriculture. Cultivated meat and plant cell culture promise reductions in emissions, land use, and water consumption. The environmental argument is straightforward. Commercial reality moves at a different pace.

Food production involves regulation, manufacturing capacity, and consumer acceptance. Scaling requires facilities, supply chains, and sustained capital investment long before revenues reach maturity. In that sense, climate technology in food resembles earlier industrial transitions more than digital startups.

The technology works in controlled environments before markets adjust around it. Investors accustomed to faster returns often hesitate during that middle period.

Why climate tech expands differently from fintech

An audience question drew a comparison that surfaced repeatedly throughout the session. Why did fintech scale rapidly across Africa while climate innovation remains more localized?

The answer lies in infrastructure. Fintech digitized existing behavior and relied on mobile networks that were already widespread. Climate ventures often begin by solving foundational problems. Energy reliability, cold storage, logistics, access to credit, data collection. Each layer must function before the next becomes viable.

Chopera noted that many climate founders are effectively rebuilding value chains from the ground up. Expansion across borders becomes complex when agricultural practices, regulations, and cultural approaches vary widely between markets. A system that works for coastal fisheries in one country may require extensive adaptation elsewhere.

Growth follows physical constraints rather than network effects.

An industry learning its own pace

The session never arrived at a single conclusion, which felt appropriate. Climate tech in Africa sits in an uncomfortable middle stage. Expectations rose quickly during years of abundant capital. Reality has introduced longer timelines and harder economics.

Yet building continues. Not out of optimism alone, but because the pressures driving these innovations remain present. Food supply, ecosystem degradation, energy access, coastal livelihoods. These problems do not pause while investment models adjust.

What emerges instead is a gradual recalibration. Blended finance structures are gaining attention. Asset-backed financing appears more relevant for infrastructure-heavy ventures. Public and philanthropic capital may continue to absorb early risk before commercial investors enter later phases.

None of this produces rapid momentum. It suggests something slower, perhaps more durable. Climate tech in Africa is not waiting for perfect conditions. It is adapting to imperfect ones, learning how to grow within them rather than around them.

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