Meet Elizabeth and Lydia, resilient entrepreneurs defying the odds to scale their climate-focused businesses. Their stories highlight the impactful role of women-led enterprises in combating climate change.

After dreaming for years of becoming a mother, Elizabeth was overjoyed to have given birth, but her early motherhood days were overshadowed by stress.

Unable to breastfeed her newborn, she was desperate to increase her breast milk production. Local farmers in Kenya told Elizabeth to try moringa powder, a nutrient-rich superfood.

“I used it, and within hours, I had so much milk,” she says. “I got my dignity back. Laughter was back in the house. Things improved with my mother-in-law. It was amazing.”

Elizabeth started learning more about moringa – which comes from a fast-growing indigenous tree, is drought-resistant and grows year-round – and began giving it to friends and family with health concerns.

“Their success stories were all the same – ‘We are off medication. Our backaches are gone,’” she recalls.

Following a gut instinct, Elizabeth quit her job and began hawking moringa – walking around downtown Nairobi and selling the powder in 100-gram sachets. In 2012, she registered Botanic Treasures as a company, eventually opening a shop in downtown Nairobi and returning to university to study food nutrition and dietetics to deepen her knowledge.

Restoring the Earth

Meanwhile, as farmers in Kenya experienced more frequent and severe climate effects, they were searching for solutions.

“We started getting too little rain, too much rain, very long dry spells, bouts where people are going months without sufficient rainfall that prevents sufficient food [production],” Elizabeth says.

Naturally, she thought of moringa, which thrives despite unpredictable weather patterns, while providing farmers with a source of income and much-needed nutrients as it can be cooked as a vegetable or used to fortify other food.

Elizabeth trained 2,000 farmers to integrate moringa into their existing crops and create food forests – made of trees, plants, nuts and fruits – which are low-maintenance, support food security and regenerate soil to “restore the Earth”, she says.

She has supported farmers to protect indigenous plants and trees. For example, some farmers previously cut neem and tamarind trees, using this wood to make charcoal; now, they sell the leaves and fruit of these trees to Elizabeth, helping them earn an income while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation.

By working with farmers, Elizabeth expanded the company’s product line to include superfood and nutrient-rich blends, teas, capsules, tablets, probiotics and oils. Now, she sources dozens of ingredients, including moringa, lemongrass and hibiscus, from 300 small farmers and employs 50 farmers during busy seasons.

Business support with a gender lens

Despite the growth of Botanic Treasures, Elizabeth could not access suitable business support or capital to grow the business. Investors often told her that moringa was under-researched and it would be safer for them to invest in more conventional businesses.

Women-led businesses like Elizabeth’s receive only 7 percent of private equity and venture capital, according to the African Women Impact Fund.

Joseph Murabula, CEO of the Kenya Climate Innovation Center, explains that women face multiple, interconnected barriers to accessing business support. Most land in Kenya is owned by men, so women “cannot do their own [agriculture or climate projects] without permission from their husbands or brothers,” he explains.

Since most women don’t own land, they lack collateral to qualify them for loans, which is needed to start or grow a business. In addition, women often bear household and caregiving responsibilities, which limit the time they can spend on these projects.

Accelerating Women Climate Entrepreneurs (AWCE) – funded by Global Affairs Canada and undertaken by the Aga Khan Foundation, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs and the World University Service of Canada – is an initiative that recognises women's leadership in addressing climate change and the importance of women in business as a full right and collective responsibility. Its approach includes identifying and responding to women’s needs, such as hiring childminders for participating mothers.

In 2022, a decade after registering her business, Elizabeth joined AWCE and says that for the first time, she felt supported as a business owner.

In a seven-week training programme followed by six months of one-on-one business advisory, Elizabeth was trained on climate financing, marketing strategies, leadership, wellness, investor readiness – and applying a gender lens to her business operations.

Upon completing the programme, Elizabeth and three other participants of the nine-member cohort were selected to receive $5,000 in funding.

She used the funds to refurbish her shop and purchase a dehydrator – and began implementing her learnings.

Elizabeth was already employing women to harvest in food forests – but their husbands often expected a share of the earnings. So Elizabeth helped them form cooperatives that hold onto part of their earnings and help them save. Many of these women are now able to consistently pay their children’s school fees, which helps their families tackle the cycle of poverty.

Bringing renewable energy to households

When Lydia joined AWCE, she was at a turning point in her business, Byestar Ltd. The company installs biodigesters – tanks that take organic matter from food, crop, animal, or human waste and use it to create clean energy for heating or generating electricity, helping households reduce their electricity and gas costs.

“Women have to go and fetch firewood and come back and cook. It’s a toll on women that biodigesters take away,” Lydia says.

In addition, the waste from biodigesters is used by households – the majority of which are subsistence farmers – as an organic fertiliser, eliminating the need to spend on synthetic fertilisers, which deplete the soil and contribute to greenhouse gases.

Adopting new models

Despite satisfied customers and a positive environmental footprint, business was slow. Lydia knew she had to make her flagship product more financially accessible.

“This programme [AWCE] came in the nick of time because I needed the courage to do a few things and I was a little bit afraid,” Lydia says. “The idea of pay-as-you-go was lingering in my mind but I wasn’t sure how to structure it in a business sense.”

Silvia Mwaura, Program Lead at Ongoza – the Kenyan organisation that trained and advised entrepreneurs like Elizabeth in the AWCE project – stepped in to support Lydia.

“Lydia was very quiet,” Silvia says. “When she graduated, we were like, ‘Who is this?’ She had internalised everything. She ran with our advice. She said, ‘I know what I need to do and I’m going to do it’ – and she got funding.”

After working closely with Silvia on a proposal for a pay-as-you-go model, Lydia received a $20,000 grant from an international funder to implement it. Now, customers can split what was previously a one-time up-front payment into monthly installments over two years.

“When I was preparing the proposal, I would bug Silvia every day. She was so supportive. I think sometimes Silvia sees my phone calls and thinks, ‘Not this one again!’” Lydia laughs.

Lydia, who now manages a team of 15 employees, says AWCE was instrumental in helping her biogas business expand by pivoting to reach more low-income households. It also boosted her confidence.

“I’ve had issues where a man comes and says, ‘You are the one in charge? Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?’”

For a while, Lydia considered having a man be the face of the business while she operated behind the scenes. Now, she’s unapologetic about being a woman in a male-dominated field.

“I own the fact that it’s my business. If you’re not feeling that, I’ll walk away.”

By Jacky Habib, a Nairobi-based freelance journalist reporting about social justice, gender, and humanitarian issues. Her work has been published by NPR, Al Jazeera, VICE, Toronto Star and others.