Emerging businesses venturing into the restoration of degraded land and forests are decrying funding shortfall, urging decision makers at the upcoming 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP 27, to increase climate finance to African greenpreneurs.

Building on the momentum of COP 26 in Glasgow, in 2021, nations are expected to demonstrate at the latest conference, COP 27, which will take place from November 6-18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, that they are in a new era of implementation by turning their commitments under the Paris Agreement into action.

Funding African businesses in combating climate change is timely as about 65% of Africa’s arable land is too damaged to sustain viable food production. At least 485 million (65%) people are affected, at a financial cost of $9.3 billion, every year, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Faida Zoubeda Uwase, a Rwandan university student, is among African greenpreneurs who are requesting funding to restore degraded forests.

"I started a business in 2019 and registered it in 2020. We started with 30,000 fruit trees. The initiative is good but we need funding. I need $120,000 to restore degraded forests. Any investor who is interested can join my company,” she told Doing Business.

Uwase founded Inkingi Eco Ltd, a company that distributes seedlings to communities to restore degraded forests. The firm also incentivizes communities to shift to improved cook stoves that use smokeless pellets.

According to Uwase, the stoves save forests from illegal logging and, so far, she has restored 286 hectares, with an additional 50 hectares of native and fruit trees in the pipeline.

Uwase pursued environmental studies at university and is now urging governments to put climate finance at the centre of the COP27 negotiations so as to support initiatives like hers.

"During COP27, negotiators should think about smallholder farmers, communities and finance businesses that are taking the lead in land restoration. Developed countries should unlock climate finance for African entrepreneurs who are mitigating climate change,” Uwase said.

In Kenya, Joseph Kiarie, another entrepreneur, is revitalizing degraded grasslands by providing sustainable fodder solutions to the Maasai community.

His solution involves planting boma rhodes grass, a drought-tolerant perennial grass that is very good for hay production in his country, to provide fodder throughout the season.

"We have successfully planted 70,000 acres of grassland and 1,500,000 trees supporting 900,000 farmers. We are partnering with more pastoralist communities to scale up this solution because drought has worsened and livestock are dying,” he said.

Kiarie, who started the firm in 2018, is also requesting for $120,000 to mitigate the effects of drought in Kenya.

Uwase and Kiarie are among the 16 African land restoration entrepreneurs who were nurtured by The Land Accelerator, a programme by World Resources Institute (WRI), which equips entrepreneurs with knowledge and skills to build economically viable and sustainable businesses that safeguard the planet from climate change effects.

Their projects include nurseries and tree planting projects, apiculture, organic food production, Black Soldier Fly farming, mangrove tree restoration, organic fertilizers, Moringa tree planting and value addition, conservation and production of essential oils from the safeguarded rich biodiversity of forests, bamboo farming, revitalizing degraded grasslands by providing sustainable fodder solutions to the Maasai community, modern cook stoves, planting avocados and eliminating avocado post-harvest loss, among others.

The entrepreneurs are from Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Sudan, Benin, Mali, Ethiopia and Cameroon.

$53.6 million needed

So far, the Land Accelerator programme accounts for a network of graduates that have engaged more than 224,544 farmers to restore more than 189,150 hectares.

In addition, more than 6,476 jobs were created across Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

However, according to WRI, more investments and partnerships are needed to support these entrepreneurs to scale up their work as an estimate of $53.6 million is needed for these companies to upscale and serve more people.

Mamadou Diakhite, the Acting Head the Environmental Sustainability Division at the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), said that African entrepreneurs need funding to help in implementing the initiative.

Diakhite is also AFR100 (the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative) secretariat manager. AFR100 is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030.

"Such initiatives need finance and should be a priority at COP27. Land restoration has been recognized since COP26, last year, as one of the vehicles to combat climate change to store carbon,” Diakhite said.

Bernadette Arakwiye, a liaison officer for WRI in Rwanda, said financing African greenpreneurs is the way to go so as to reduce the continent’s vulnerability to effects of climate change.

"We opened a fund called ‘TerraFund’ in which $20 million has been invested where entrepreneurs and nonprofit innovators restoring trees to Africa’s land can apply for funding,” Arakwiye said.

Entrepreneurs and nonprofit innovators can apply for between $50,000 and $500,000 in funding.

"So far 100 of them have received the funding,” she said.

The Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS) is a Rwandan organization that is among those that received funding to protect and restore thousands of hectares surrounding the degraded Mukura Forest Reserve, a protected reserve in the northwest part of Rwanda, covering about 1,200 square kilometers.

Civil society, negotiators speak

Faustin Mvuningoma, the Coordinator of Rwanda Climate Change and Development Network (RCCDN) which has more than 60 organizations, said that climate finance at COP27 should be successfully discussed by African negotiators.

The Rwandan civil society is also participating at COP27 and RCCDN joined the African Civil Society through the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) to push for climate justice.

"Rwanda, like other African countries, does not contribute a lot to climate change by polluting the air but we are more vulnerable to climate change effects than developed countries that are top carbon emitters. That is why climate finance is Rwanda’s priority which we as civil society organizations are supporting,” Mvuningoma said.

Mvuningoma said that developed countries should compensate Africa for the loss and damage they cause, under a compensation scheme known as "Loss and Damage.”

The fund proposed by developing countries to support their efforts in tackling climate change was rejected by big powers at COP26.

"The climate finance to mitigate climate change should be increased and reach local communities in a transparent way to cope with the effects,” he noted.

Since 2009, in Copenhagen, the world pledged to avail $100 billion, every year, by 2020 to support developing countries to cope with effects of climate change. The pledge has never been met.

The deadline to reach the $100 billion pledge was pushed to 2025.

"We understand the priorities of the country in line with COP27 and we have to support a common country position through the continental position at COP27,” Mvuningoma said.

Herman Hakuzimana, an environment and climate change adaptation and mitigation Specialist at the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) who is among the climate negotiators, said that there is a need for a resolution to increase climate finance.

"People are losing lives due to extreme weather events and as such climate finance should be increased to reverse the trend. Top emitters of carbon should take tangible action to limit global warming,” Hakuzimana said.

Rwanda is part of three climate negotiations groups – the Least Developed Country Group (LDC), the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), as well as the G-77 and China which involve all developing countries.

"COP27 should advance implementation of adaptation financing action, operationalization of global goals to support the most vulnerable countries and catalyze effective finance, technology and capacity building,” he added.

Climate finance for Africa needs to grow nine times, from $30 billion to $277 billion, so to meet the 2030 climate goal, a new study indicates.