Nigeria Climate Innovation Center and Green Economy
Hello Friends and Partners,
We are Live!!!!
I am super excited to welcome you to our maiden monthly Newsletter, where we share insights on progress including opportunities we curate on our way to drive the growth of a viable Green Economy in Nigeria through one business (startup or SME), project and innovation after the other. Before I proceed, walk with me as I take you on a journey through the viability of a Green Economy in Nigeria from the NCIC perspective.
NCIC (and other CICs across the globe) is a World Bank initiative in partnership with the Government of Nigeria through the Office of the Vice President with the support of Enterprise Development Center in the Lagos Business School. It is set up to drive the growth of the Green Economy in Nigeria by building market entry innovation-driven ventures, driving investments, and providing innovation centered solutions to solve climate challenges in Nigeria. We are part of the network of CICs around the world and the newest in Africa and we run Incubation and Acceleration programs by providing growth-focused business advisory, mentorship, access to funding and finance, venture development and investment for green solutions; products or businesses.
Whilst making great strides in our quest, permit me to help you understand the Green Economy from our eyes. As per definition, the Green Economy is an alternative economy for the fossil fuel economy. It is powered by clean technology and seeks to reverse the adverse effect of the fossil fuel economy and create wealth while positively impacting our community. Side note, we really think nuclear energy is not a part of the Green Economy (No, we do not want to go there) because it is not sustainable in the long run. The Green Economy is so important and strategic to the positive growth of the world both economically and environmentally as we have all noticed global warming is increasing the planet’s temperature, animals are going extinct, GHG emissions are of great concern across the world. To us at the NCIC, we view the best way to ensure a viable Green Economy is to be conscious of our dealings making Green core in our investments, financial forecasting, project designs, lifestyle, way of living cleaner and better lives, In essence, more ethical in business mannerisms while creating wealth.
NCIC as you may be aware focuses on renewable energy, water, waste management, and agribusiness. Our low reach high impact focus is Power and for a country like Nigeria we not overemphasize the obvious
For the next year, 2019/2020 our goal is to build awareness on the Green Economy in Nigeria and to create a strong Green Economy ecosystem. With this in mind as well as the understanding that there are at least five focus areas in every ecosystem in a new economy; the government, private sector, Academia, development society groups; Civil Society Organisations, Multinational Corporations, including embassies and finally the SMEs themselves. Our focus for the new economy ecosystem is to harness the strength of these groups toward the drive for opportunities for more Green conscious investments, the private sector sees where the opportunities are, the public sector helps with policies and creating a conducive environment for business, academia drives much more research that can be commercialized and turned into businesses, CSO and development organization help for accountability, governance and coming up with social solutions and access to those that need those impacts. The whole essence is for us to build an ecosystem and drive awareness of the potentials of the Green Economy in Nigeria.
We have taken the first steps by partnerships with the different stakeholders including the Federal Government of Nigeria among other (Click the link for more information). We have also launched our incubation program with fifteen businesses around us. Two are on foreign fellowships and thirteen others in our incubation program. These businesses were selected from finalist of the Climate LaunchPad competition last year while another set is currently being curated for the 2nd edition of the climate LaunchPad and they will come as cohort 2 of the NCIC.
Our venture development program run from prototyping; early stage, to acceleration; growth stage. We will also be setting up an NCIC venture investment platform — The Nigeria Climate Investment Fund under this special purpose investment vehicle we look to boost investors confidence in early-stage businesses toward Growth financing through other instruments available in this regard we aim to set up a 2 million USD early stage green investment fund which we hope to match up to 10–15 million in another 2–3 years. We believe in these possibilities as our strength in venture development through our customized early stage de-risking model
The Green Economy in Nigeria is a long haul, not a fad and we can plug into the global multi-trillion dollars potentials and investment opportunities of the Green Economy if we as an ecosystem (and economy) understand the concept of building viable businesses to mitigate the problems we face in climate change.
Finally, we think that with proper investment in early-stage businesses, we should see a huge rise in the number of successes when it comes to the growth of the Green Economy in Nigeria and also create new opportunities for lives to be impacted and jobs created while making the world a better place.
Thank you and let us make things better by making better things.
Regards
