EIT Climate-KIC joins 2X Global to support improved access to finance for gender and climate initiatives

08/03/2023, Amsterdam – EIT Climate-KIC has joined 2X Global, a global industry body focused on increasing the volume and impact of capital directed towards women’s economic empowerment worldwide.

Women, who are disproportionately and directly affected by climate change, are often better placed to develop solutions to adapt to its impacts. Globally, only one in three businesses are owned by women. However, women entrepreneurs face great barriers to accessing finance, which further exacerbates existing gender inequalities, and prevents them from playing a role in developing climate solutions and accessing leadership positions.

Supporting women-led climate initiatives worldwide

EIT Climate-KIC is committed to actively embracing gender inclusivity across its activities and programmes. Launched in April 2022, EIT Climate-KIC’s WeClim Equally gender smart handbook for climate programmes provides guidance to climate incubators and accelerators on integrating a gender perspective into their programming and organisations.

In September 2022, EIT Climate-KIC selected six partners from Tanzania, Uganda, Colombia and Vietnam to work on gender mainstreaming for entrepreneurship projects. Through locally designed accelerator programmes for women climate entrepreneurs, education campaigns, workshops in financial literacy, a revolving fund, gender bias training, and more, they aim to raise gender awareness, decrease gender bias, and improve support for women innovators in their communities, their organisations and the entrepreneurs participating in their programmes. 

Mobilising funds for women-led climate initiatives

By increasing access to finance, women entrepreneurs can develop and implement innovative solutions, including around climate mitigation and adaptation, that can directly improve their livelihoods and those of their communities. Moreover, women climate entrepreneurs are at the forefront of innovative solutions, ready to be scaled up and catalysed.

With 2X Global’s members-driven structured networks, EIT Climate-KIC can tap into a diverse community of capital providers, mobilisers and influencers to enhance awareness of the importance and benefits of gender lens investing and programming. By being a member of 2X Global, EIT Climate-KIC is committed to actively engaging in transforming finance systems towards gender parity, inclusive economies, and sustainability.

“EIT Climate-KIC has always worked in mobilising and empowering people with education, support programmes, and grant funding. By joining the 2X Global community, we will be able to take bigger action and address the biggest barriers that women entrepreneurs face to ensure that they have equal opportunities to participate in and contribute to the development of climate innovation,” says Aimee Apel, Gender Lead at EIT Climate-KIC.

She continues: “The climate crisis needs more inclusive and diverse perspectives. The partnership between EIT Climate-KIC and 2X Global will lead to more women getting the financing they need to implement innovation, develop technology, and find the right partners.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome EIT Climate-KIC as a 2X Global member. We look forward to our collaboration to further catalyse funding for gender- and climate-smart entrepreneurs and strategic initiatives along the continuum of capital,” says Jessica Espinoza, CEO of 2X Global.

In 2023 and beyond, EIT Climate-KIC will continue to implement its WeClim Equally toolkit and inclusivity content, expand the reach of these materials making them widely available to more delivery partners across the globe and develop an impact framework around the intersection of gender and climate impact.

Supporting women in their entrepreneurship journey is only one part of the effort. We also need to raise awareness in organisations that design climate programmes and climate investment opportunities so that they start addressing the gender climate gap in startup acceleration. EIT Climate-KIC, now with the support of the partnership with 2X Global, focuses on investing in capacity building for partner organisations, the people running them, and the start-ups benefitting from them. We aim to achieve 50/50 gender balance across all delivery partner programmes by 2030. 

Contact us at gender@climate-kic.org if you’re interested to hear more about our activities around gender mainstreaming.