The Africa Fair Seaweed Finance Facility will provide access to finance for women-led seaweed farmer groups in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique (Western Indian Ocean) to adopt deep-sea seaweed farming technology that is less prone to the effects of climate change, with higher yield and more ecological benefits. The solution aims to increase the resilience of women’s seaweed farmers to climate change, improve their yields, and enhance their livelihoods by collaborating with high-margin buyers to guarantee volume and seaweed prices, which will be passed on to the women seaweed farmers through groups in the form of long-term purchase orders with guaranteed minimum income.
It will bridge three key areas critical to scaling a sustainable seaweed industry in the WIO:
(1) Innovative seaweed cultivation, management, and processing knowledge and technology,
(2) Novel community-led development strategies that lean on existing community expertise, and
(3) Access to a broad range of both local and international markets ready to uptake the seaweed products.
The facility will apply best practices from fund management, vendor finance, equipment leasing, and energy-as-a-service models. The facility targets to impact 25,000 women seaweed farmers in the Western Indian Ocean in the next 5 years, starting in Kenya and Tanzania and then to Mozambique.
The solution targets Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 14, directly working with and impacting women living along the WIO coastline as well as WIO marine ecosystems. The facility is expected to mobilize private capital from various sources, such as foundations, impact investors, and development finance institutions. The financial model expects to raise at least US$1m in capital in the first 12-18 months and US$50 million in 5 years of which half is expected to come from commercial impact investors. The leverage ratio or the ratio of private capital mobilized to grant proceeds, is targeted to be 1:125 over 5 years.