Clean Cooking Finance Masterclass – Going to Scale
25 October | On the occasion of the Clean Cooking Forum 2022 in Accra, Ghana (11-13th October), Energy Enterprise Coach (EEC) and GET.invest, supported by the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), hosted the third edition of the Clean Cooking Finance Masterclass, themed ‘Going to Scale’. The one-day business development training followed the previous two editions organised by Energising Development and GET.invest in 2019 and 2021 and was designed to bring together early-stage SMEs in the clean cooking and biogas sectors to develop their capacity in business development and scaling up, and to share experiences between peers and sector champions from across Africa.
For the Masterclass, 10 aspiring growth-minded clean cooking entrepreneurs from across five countries (Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia and Benin) were competitively selected from an application pool of over 90 applicants. These entrepreneurs were trained topics related to the ‘Going to Scale’ process such as business development foundations, essentials of business planning, basics of financial modelling and accessing finance. The class covered both theory-based learning and hands-on exercises, designed to enable participants to put theory to practice and engage in peer-to-peer interactions and sharing lessons learned. The participants also had the opportunity to engage with an investor, Energise Africa, to understand a financier’s perspective on investing in clean cooking businesses. One of the participants sums up the experience as follows: “The masterclass was the greatest opportunity for me as I lead Kukula Solar towards scale. The training delivered on financial modelling, pitching and business planning were easy to understand and practical. Thanks to organisers for investing in me.” (Francis Mbewe, Kukula Solar, Zambia)
Following the Masterclass, all the participants had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the Clean Cooking Forum, engaging in networking, B-2-B matchmaking and gaining firsthand insights into innovations, new developments and opportunities emerging in the sector.
As a brand-new initiative by RVO and Energizing Development, the EEC is about to launch its Business Development Support (BDS) facility targeted at SMEs operating in countries supported by partner programmes (Africa Biogas Component (ABC), HigherTier Cooking Component (HTCC), and the Energising Development (EnDev) Partnership). The EEC aims to support enterprises in their journey towards professionalisation, enabling them to progress towards receiving support from the GET.invest Finance Readiness Support and Finance Catalyst and accessing finance.