Supported by IKEA Foundation
Through the Access to Green Finance Project, ANDE East Africa, with generous support from the IKEA Foundation, focused on a singular mission: increasing investment into early-stage waste management and circular economy enterprises. The project catalyzed the sector by executing a robust mix of targeted interventions, including investor capacity building, ESO-investor matchmaking, collaborative Action Labs, ecosystem networking, and policy working groups.
The following sections highlight the key achievements of these initiatives.
To support capital providers driving sustainable solutions, ANDE delivered a bespoke version of its flagship Investment Manager Training (IMT) tailored specifically to the nuances of waste management and circularity. Across 2024 and 2025, a total of 35 investment professionals in Kenya participated in the program. Through a targeted series of activities, ANDE helped these investors deepen their sector knowledge, expand their local networks, and refine their investment strategies to accelerate capital deployment into the circular economy.
ANDE served as the ecosystem orchestrator in Kenya, providing a specialized platform that connected an investor cohort with waste management and circular economy stakeholders. Through this network, ANDE fostered strategic partnerships, accelerated capital deployment to green enterprises, and championed collaborative frameworks necessary to advance Kenya’s circular economy goals.
ANDE East Africa hosted a series of collaborative workshops and webinars providing a platform for investors and entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) to refine investment strategies, share insights, and brainstorm on how to improve the pipeline of investment-ready enterprises emerging from accelerators and incubators. More than 250 stakeholders have been involved in the different ESO-Investor workshops. SGBs were able to pitch and engage with investors in these workshops.
Through the Innovation Fund, ANDE empowered Entrepreneurship Support Organizations (ESOs) to design and implement technical assistance activities aimed at increasing capital flows into these critical sectors. The participating organizations, Circle Innovation, Agri Frontier, Smart Regional Consultants & KCV, and Sote Hub, designed and delivered supplemental programs and targeted interventions, in close consultation with investors, to ensure increased capital deployment into waste and circularity businesses. More than 120 entrepreneurs have benefited from this project through the different programs run in collaboration with our partners.
ANDE and our partners recently hit the field to visit entrepreneurs backed by the Access to Green Finance Innovation Fund.
Moving from boardroom metrics to ground-level realities, these visits allowed us to witness firsthand how the strategic pairing of capital and technical assistance is helping early-stage eco-enterprises scale. From streamlining green supply chains to creating local climate-resilient jobs, these founders are proving that small and growing businesses are the frontline defense against climate vulnerability.
ANDE East Africa was a key partner for the forum, bringing together a select group of capital providers, policymakers, ESOs, and high-growth ventures to discuss actionable solutions for improving access to capital. During the event, our Innovation Fund grantees shared insights into their programs that support entrepreneurs in transitioning from investment readiness to securing financing. They also highlighted how technical assistance helps shape and improve financing outcomes. Top-performing entrepreneurs from these programs, identified through data records and readiness assessments, had the opportunity to showcase their enterprises, attracting interest from several capital providers and other stakeholders in attendance.
ANDE partnered with local advocacy partner organizations Kenya to connect 20+ public and private ecosystem actors, validate policy recommendations, and advocate for policy reform in the waste management and circular economy sector.
In collaboration with the Kenya Association of Waste and Recyclers (KAWR), ANDE established a multisectoral Policy Working Group on Circular Economy to bring together community organizations, business networks, and Kenyan government officials. The initiative focuses on reducing barriers and creating incentives for circular economy enterprises to formalize their operations and attract financing. To support the transition toward sustainable, locally led business models, the group builds capacity for entrepreneurs, innovators, and policymakers. Most recently, ANDE and KAWR convened these stakeholders to discuss the implementation roadmap for the Sustainable Waste Management Act (EPR) and launched an awareness campaign to promote various circular economy regulations.
ANDE East Africa, in collaboration with Sote Hub and Kenya Recyclers, engaged with stakeholders in the Mombasa ecosystem through a series of activities focused on the waste management and circular economy sector, as part of our Access to Green Finance Project; a partnership with the IKEA Foundation. We hosted a collaborative workshop and policy roundtable to engage policymakers and key stakeholders in the waste and circularity space. The policy workshop also engaged the county government of Mombasa with engagement with the Deputy Governor of Mombasa. This engagement was important given that waste management and circular economy is a devolved function in Kenya.
ANDE deployed its Action Lab methodology to bring together a variety of sector stakeholders to identify innovative, collaborative solutions to systemic challenges facing the waste and circularity sector in Kenya.
ANDE in collaboration with CAPYEI and sector experts in the action lab delivered the waste Innovator Program that provided tailored training to 10 innovators in the waste and circularity sector. The entrepreneurs were provided with seed capital at the end of the program in December 2025 to support them in unlocking the next stage of their growth. ANDE is currently running a phase 2 of the action lab that will implement innovative solutions to additional challenges facing the entrepreneurs in the waste and circularity sector.
The phase 2 of the ANDE’s Action Lab in Kenya would help address the gaps identified in phase 1. The process involves in-person and virtual engagements amongst participants to spark actionable collaborations, identify barriers to success, improve existing solutions, and ideate new solutions to systems-level challenges obstructing financial access, market access and effective support for small and growing businesses (SGBs) in waste and circularity. The outcome of the 2025 Circularity Action Lab is a vetted ready-to-fund initiative(s) aimed at enhancing access to Green Finance that are backed by early-stage evidence supporting their ability to generate the intended systemic impact. The final product was to run a revolving fund to support entrepreneurs in the project’s pipeline.
ANDE hosted our flagship Metrics from the Ground Up 2025 Conference from May 6–8, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya.
As a premier global forum for Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) in the Small and Growing Business (SGB) sector, the 2025 convening shifted the narrative “From Metrics to Momentum.” Rather than treating metrics as abstract numbers for compliance, the focus was heavily placed on integrating data directly into day-to-day operational decision-making, shifting toward community-centric tracking, and balancing standardized frameworks with local context.
With only a fraction of Kenya's daily waste being recycled, the potential for circular innovation is immense. ANDE’s latest toolkit, born from our Climate and Environment Action Lab, empowers ESOs and investors to support SGBs driving the circular economy. Discover actionable insights on program design, impact measurement, and ecosystem collaboration to help Kenyan entrepreneurs turn waste into long-term economic value.
Our new guides highlight high-impact sub-sectors and innovative financing solutions for sustainable growth.
Kenya's waste management and circularity sector offers significant opportunities for investors, driven by economic growth, increasing waste generation, growing regulations and innovations. This introductory guide is the first in a series that also includes investment guides that deep dive into each of the highest opportunity sub-sectors in Kenya’s waste and circularity sector: plastic waste, wastewater, organic waste and integrated waste management. These guides provide further information on trends, opportunities, policies and challenges, as well as further details on the main identified business models and their financing needs and case studies of successful businesses.
Kenya's waste management and circularity sector is rapidly emerging as a critical area for sustainable investment. Across the ten sub-sectors and 122 businesses identified within this space in KOIS and ANDE’s Introductory Guide to Investing in the Waste and Circularity Sector in Kenya , four key sub-sectors have demonstrated particularly high potential for investment. Those sub-sectors are organic waste, plastic waste, wastewater, and integrated waste management. This investment guide outlines the complex landscape of the sector, highlighting critical financing needs and investment strategies. While detailed deep-dive guides have been developed to explore each of the four key subsectors, this guide focuses on the financial dynamics that underpin successful investments. It examines the varying financing needs across the different stages of business maturity and sub-sectors. Moreover, it highlights the key factors of success for waste management and circularity businesses, investment trends, gaps and opportunities for innovative finance solutions that could shape the sector. Finally, this guide provides insights into how investors can strategically position themselves and better catalyse investment to grow the sector.
Climate change and environmental degradation pose a significant threat to Kenya’s economy. To combat these challenges, Kenya has supported a green economic transition through various government policies and initiatives. Green entrepreneurs play an important role in helping the country reach these climate and environmental targets by meeting consumer needs in a sustainable manner. This report examines the ecosystem of support for green entrepreneurs in Kenya. Using data collected via surveys and desk research, this snapshot report uncovers important challenges and opportunities for green entrepreneurship to inform stakeholders of how to better support the development of Kenya’s green economy.
