Shell Foundation

From street-food vendors to global recognition for eCooking 🏆 We're delighted to celebrate eCooking for Livelihoods: Productive-Use Electric Cooking Transition for India's Micro-Food Enterprises, led by @Finovista which has won the Sector Award at the inaugural Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) Sustainable Lifestyles Awards 2026. Selected through a global process that assessed more than 40 submissions, the award recognises pioneering solutions that advance fair, people-centred clean energy transitions. The awards were launched by the Clean Energy Ministerial's Sustainable Lifestyles, Fairness and Access to Clean Energy Campaign, a global initiative led by governments including India, Norway, China and the European Commission to accelerate clean energy transitions that work for people as well as the planet. At Shell Foundation, we've been proud to support Finovista's efforts to demonstrate how electric cooking can strengthen livelihoods for India's micro-food entrepreneurs. Working alongside EESL and other partners, the initiative builds on a pilot with street-food vendors and is now working towards reaching up to 60,000 vendors, with a longer-term ambition to scale much further. What makes this recognition particularly significant is that it highlights a practical model for delivering clean energy where it can have the greatest impact: helping small businesses reduce operating costs, improve working conditions and grow their incomes, while supporting wider energy transition goals. Most importantly, the award recognises the street-food vendors who helped prove what is possible, alongside the strength of the partnership and the innovation required to take promising solutions from pilot to scale. Congratulations to Finovista, EESL and everyone involved in this achievement. 👏 #CleanEnergy #CleanCooking #EnergyAccess #SustainableLifestyles #CEM17

A new clean cooking opportunity for food vendors in Kenya and Uganda ⚡ Food businesses are one of the largest microenterprise groups in Africa In Nairobi alone, they employ around 70,000 people and cook for more than a third of the city's population each day. Yet many still rely on charcoal, leaving vendors exposed to rising fuel costs and shortages, as well as the impacts of air pollution and heat. That's why we're supporting 'Cooking Livelihoods and Income for Microenterprises' (CLiME), a new programme led by CLASP, designed to unlock a triple win for food vendors: 💰 Lower costs and better incomes 💚 Improved health outcomes 🌍 Fewer emissions At the same time, CLiME aims to expand investment in clean energy solutions for in this often overlooked sector. CLiME is funded by Shell Foundation and the UK Government via the @TEAEnergyAccess. Read more: ow.ly/1HPZ51021b4 @UKMECS @ayrton_fund #TransformingEnergyAccess #CleanCooking #EnergyAccess

🌱 When 30–50% of perishable produce is lost before reaching consumers, farmers and micro-entrepreneurs lose income too. Better technology can help, but lasting scale depends on business models that are affordable for customers and commercially viable for suppliers. A new report from @ShellFoundation and @500GlobalVC, developed with support from the Transforming Energy Access (#TEA) platform through funding from the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (#FCDO), explores the most promising pathways to advance sustainable cooling and clean cooking in Kenya, Nigeria, and India. The findings highlight clear opportunities in first-mile cooling, helping protect agricultural incomes, and in clean cooking solutions that can strengthen margins for small food businesses. The focus is simple: back solutions that can raise incomes, lower emissions and scale sustainably. 🔗 Read the full report: shellfoundation.org/press-re… #CleanEnergy #ClimateFinance #Cooling #CleanCooking

🏍️ We’re pleased to welcome Yamaha Motor to the Africa Corporate Innovation Program. Delivered by Shell Foundation in partnership with Double Feather Partners, the programme helps connect Japanese corporates with African startups to test practical solutions in real-world markets. Through this collaboration, Yamaha Motor will work with selected startups and local partners across East Africa to explore new mobility services across three areas: electric mobility, mobility financing and mobility ecosystem operations. Supported by UK International Development through the RIDE programme, this work aims to generate evidence for scalable partnerships that can improve access to transport, logistics and economic opportunity while supporting lower-emission mobility. 🔗 Read the full press release to learn more: shellfoundation.org/press-re… #SustainableMobility #Innovation #Africa #ClimateFinance

📊 New trends. New signals. New opportunities. Our latest #MarketIntelligenceDigest explores some of the developments shaping inclusive energy transition markets across #Africa and #Asia, from evolving electric mobility policies and battery-swapping ecosystems to clean cooking finance, digital commerce infrastructure and changing agricultural value chains. This edition highlights: 🔹New policy momentum for electric mobility in South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and Kenya 🔹Growing investment and commercial progress in e-mobility and clean cooling markets 🔹The increasing importance of interoperability, localisation and after-sales services 🔹Emerging insights on farmer incomes, diversification and resilient agricultural value chains We also share key industry events taking place over the coming months, including the Africa Food Systems Forum, Climate Week NYC and Africa E-Mobility Week. Read the latest digest here: shellfoundation.org/market-i…

🌱 Africa’s next generation of agribusinesses does not need to be built from scratch. Family-owned agribusinesses across Africa have built trusted farmer networks, deep market knowledge and strong processing capabilities. Yet many still face barriers to reaching new markets and accessing long-term capital. That is why Shell Foundation has invested alongside Small Foundation in Unmarkets, in partnership with the UK Government through @FCDOGovUK. Unmarkets partners with established agribusinesses to build new businesses that combine local expertise with brand development, management capacity and long-term capital. Across its portfolio, Unmarkets aims to reach 200,000 smallholder farmers, at least 60% women, and increase farmer incomes by at least 20%. Stronger businesses. More reliable markets. More value for farmers. Find out more: shellfoundation.org/press-re… #SmallholderFarmers #Agribusiness #ImpactInvesting #Africa

🌾 @ShellFoundation Business Advisor Devi Murthy will be speaking at the AVPN Global Conference 2026 in New Delhi on 27 August. Devi will join the session Financing Farmer-Led Food Systems in South and Southeast Asia, exploring a persistent challenge: how to get more capital flowing to the small farms that underpin much of the region’s food supply. The discussion will look at the barriers holding investment back, where collaboration can help, and the growing opportunities to build more inclusive and investable food systems. 📍 New Delhi 📅 Thursday, 27 August | 2.30–3.45pm #ClimateFinance #SmallholderFarmers #FoodSystems

🌱 We're delighted to welcome @AnfaniEnergy to @ShellFoundation's portfolio. 🇳🇬 Across #Nigeria, millions of micro-entrepreneurs rely on expensive, unreliable power that limits business growth and profitability. Through this partnership, we are supporting Anfani to pilot a shared productive-use energy model that gives microenterprises, particularly women-led businesses, access to clean-energy-powered equipment through affordable pay-per-use, subscription and lease-to-own models. Together, we aim to demonstrate a scalable pathway to lower energy costs, increase productivity and incomes, and accelerate access to clean energy for underserved businesses. Learn more about Anfani and our partnership: shellfoundation.org/portfoli…

👩🏾‍🌾👨🏻‍⚕️ At Shell Foundation, we start with the customer, not the technology. Our work is built around three core groups: smallholder farmers, transporters and micro-entrepreneurs. Each faces different pressures, but the question is the same: can a clean energy solution help them earn more, reduce costs or run their business more reliably? That is why we talk about customers, not beneficiaries. Before we back a solution, we look at what matters in the real world: affordability, productivity, reliability and access to finance. Because even the most innovative technology will not scale if it does not make economic sense for the person using it. Across the segments we focus on, productive uses of clean energy can unlock 40–100% income uplift, depending on the customer and solution. For us, scale starts with solving a real economic problem. Find out more about how we work and the customers we serve: shellfoundation.org/people-w… #CleanEnergy #InclusiveGrowth #ClimateFinance #CatalyticCapital

💵 What happens when a promising #market is still considered too risky for commercial investors? That is where catalytic capital can make the difference: by taking on some of the early risk, it helps build the evidence commercial lenders need before they are ready to invest at scale. Shell Foundation uses grants, guarantees and first-loss capital to test new models and reduce that initial risk. When those models prove they work, banks and investors can enter the market with much larger amounts of capital. We have seen this in practice in India, where a $200,000 loan guarantee helped demonstrate that women micro-entrepreneurs could be reliable borrowers, with zero defaults. That evidence helped unlock more than $10 million in mainstream bank lending. The principle is simple: Shell Foundation does not aim to replace commercial finance. We take targeted early risk to help make markets investable, so commercial capital can follow and solutions can reach far greater scale. That is the multiplier effect shown here. #CatalyticCapital #BlendedFinance #ImpactInvesting #FinancialInclusion