EEP Africa offers early-stage financing to clean energy companies in East and Southern Africa. Once selected, grantees can also benefit from other complimentary support such as technical assistance, investment facilitation, and networking.
Financing
EEP Africa provides funding through annual, open competitive calls for proposals to projects that are in early-stage, innovative, and in active development. The Fund offers both grants and repayable grants on a co-financing basis, with ticket sizes between EUR 200,000-500,000. Companies, start-ups and social enterprises are eligible to apply. For more information about each call, please visit the Call for Proposals page.
Technical Assistance
EEP Africa offers needs-based Technical Assistance to its grantees. The process emphasises a bottom-up approach to identify grantees’ needs and capacity to absorb support, expected additionality for the business, complementarity to support offered by other organisations, and cash or in-kind co-financing. Support includes:
- Bespoke support: one-off assignments performed by professional consultants to address a specific grantee’s need. Examples of previous support includes specialist staff training, building business tools and processes, and developing strategy in areas such as sales or go-to-market.
- Fractional hires: funded part-time senior staff embedded in a grantee organisation to fill resource gaps where capacity is constrained, or scale doesn't yet justify a full-time hire. Previous positions include HR, Finance and Operations, and Marketing.
- End user impact studies: professional evaluation of a grantee’s impact on its end users. Results of the study are used for product and business model validation and as evidence of impact to potential investors.
- Cohort training: training designed to address challenges seen across the portfolio, open to all grantees.
- TA newsletter: A quarterly TA newsletter to keep grantees informed of updates, funding opportunities, and upcoming events.
See below for some of the produced resources that have been made publicly available.
Investment Facilitation
EEP Africa recognises the critical need for its grantees to find follow-on investment to leverage the learnings from their project, and scale. The Fund maintains strong relationships with investors around the continent and supports its grantees to build their knowledge, strengthen their pitch, and meet suitable investors.
Activities under this branch include investment-focussed knowledge exchange and webinars, support to develop pitch materials, and facilitating direct grantee-investor engagements.
Networking and Visibility
EEP Africa grantees benefit from support to enhance their network. This includes:
- Funding membership to industry associations, such as the Alliance for Rural Electrification, GOGLA, or the African Mini-grids Association.
- Sponsored attendance to relevant industry conferences or events.
- Speaking opportunities at EEP Africa events, online and in-person.
- Dedicated spotlights in EEP Africa social media posts and news articles.
- Annual awards given to the highest performers in the portfolio: Project of the Year and Rising Energy Leader.
- Inclusion in EEP Africa publications, including the portfolio booklet, research and reports, case studies, video spotlights, and others.
Grantee Testimonials
Here's what grantees have to say about EEP Africa's support:
For even more information about the grantees and their projects, visit Impact Stories.
Resources
Coming soon!
Check back here later to see resources from TA and investment readiness activities that have been made public.
