LocationsBehind the Pipeline
A closer look at what it takes to move a climate or energy project from an idea into something a bank, a fund, or an investor is ready to back.
Most people encounter a climate or energy project only once it's already running, generating power, or delivering the result it was built for. What rarely makes it into that story is everything that happened before it, the long stretch when a good idea was still just an idea, and someone somewhere was doing the quiet unseen work.
This is an attempt to show some of that work directly, through the people who do it. Ten short conversations with the developers who build these projects, and the UNDP country teams who work alongside them across Africa. Each one was asked a handful of honest questions and answered them without a script.
How the support works
Two of UNDP Rome Centre's main channels for this kind of work are the Platform for Investment Support and Technical Assistance, known as PISTA, and Energy for Growth in Africa. Both programmes work from the same basic premise, that a strong project and the financing requirements in most cases do not align. PISTA and Energy for Growth in Africa, are Project Preparation Facilities that provide technical assistance to project developers to enable them to reach financial close.
What that support involves changes depending on what a project needs at a given stage, sometimes it is an assessment on the project’s technical, financial and economic, social and environmental structuring ,other times it is to build the regulatory architecture that a financier looks for before a serious conversation becomes possible.
Regardless of the needs, our support stays consistent, across very different projects and countries as those needs continue to evolve.
What follows are ten accounts of that work, told directly by the people who worked on it.
Linda Davis
Giraffe Bioenergy
In Kilifi, Kenya, farmers are growing cassava on land that used to sit degraded and largely unused. The plan is to turn that harvest into ethanol for transportation fuel, output that, once the project is running, is expected to displace a meaningful share of what Kenya currently imports.
Beyond the fuel itself, the project is designed to support women smallholders specifically, through training, access to improved cassava seedlings, and more reliable income as the surrounding value chain develops. Getting to this point meant solving two distinct problems that happened to hit at the same time. One was the environmental and social impact assessment needed for large-scale cassava agriculture that also draws water from a nearby river. The other was a separate assessment for the bio-refinery itself, an entirely different set of technical and regulatory questions.
Linda Davis describes PISTA's contribution to this stage in fairly specific terms, helping in building a comprehensive agricultural master plan for the 5,000 acres involved, as well as in building the agricultural and factory environmental and social impact assessments, and bringing in the world-class specialist consultants needed to carry out all assessments properly. The real value of the support, in her account, showed up in what it made possible afterward.
Impact investors willing to write smaller checks and infrastructure investors looking for something built at a completely different scale don't naturally speak the same language or move at the same pace, and closing that distance is where PISTA's contribution mattered most. A 300-hectare farm using improved cassava varieties is already established, and a long-term lease for 2,000 hectares has been secured. Debt financing is also in place, with conversations now underway with potential equity investors.
“PISTA was quite honestly game-changing, because they were able to bridge the gap between impact investors with small checks and very distinct theories based on their investment theses, and infrastructure investors.”
Austin Chijikwa
Zanaco Bank
In Zambia's Lunsemfwa-Mkushi river catchments, a project is working on two connected problems at once, restoring land that has become degraded, and helping farmers invest in more climate-resilient practices, by building a dedicated loan facility. The two are designed to reinforce each other. Healthier land and better water management upstream mean steadier, less sediment-heavy water flows downstream, a real benefit for the hydropower operators, utilities, and beverage producers who depend on that water. It's part of a larger regional initiative spanning three countries, backed by USD 30 million from the Adaptation Fund.
Reaching the farmers this project is meant to serve required Zanaco Bank to step into territory it hadn't operated in before. Lending to smallholder and emerging farmers at such an early, largely unproven stage sat outside anything the bank had traditionally done. That's changing gradually, through work Chijikwa describes as central to the bank's own risk assessment.
With UNDP's support, Zanaco is now piloting the use of geospatial data, developed with its partner Civil Earth, in how it evaluates and monitors credit, sharpening both loan origination and the bank's ability to track risk on the ground over time. The project is currently in its preparation phase. Market studies are underway with Zanaco as the key financial partner, and industrial water users have already expressed early interest in supporting the restoration work through a related payment mechanism, once that piece of the project is in place.
“Of particular importance for us is the addition of technology and the use of technology in our lending to smallholder farmers. It’s been a missing piece for us and a key enabler.”
Jonathan Bellish
Shuraako Capital
Shuraako Capital has spent more than a decade lending to small and medium businesses in Somalia, more than 200 loans across 15 sectors by now. Many of the businesses it works with sit in a difficult position, too large for microfinance, but still too small or too risky for larger investors, even when the underlying business is genuinely sound. That in-between position matters even more in fragile, climate-vulnerable settings, where the enterprises caught in it are often exactly the ones creating jobs and delivering essential services.
What Bellish and his colleagues wanted to understand went beyond whether a loan made commercial sense on its own. Among businesses with similar commercial potential, they wanted to know which ones actually delivered more against development goals. With PISTA's support, Shuraako ran pilot impact studies to test that question directly, comparing businesses in sectors like the sesame trade and the water sector across Djibouti, Somalia, and northern Kenya. The studies pointed toward something specific, that certain subsectors deliver disproportionately high development impact without sacrificing commercial viability, insight that's now feeding directly into the investment case for the Resilience Impact Fund for the Horn of Africa, a regional fund aiming to reach small businesses working in food security, clean energy, and water and sanitation.
The fund has secured part of its initial funding and technical assistance grant support already approved. Bellish sees two clear directions from here, expanding the same approach regionally into Ethiopia's Somali region and beyond, and using the sharper understanding of development impact this work has produced to attract more capital from investors focused specifically on that kind of return.
“Our biggest challenge was understanding the relative importance against the SDGs for these different investments, and that’s what we came to PISTA trying to understand better.”
Joseph Mwangi Njuguna
UNDP Kenya
Our work in Kenya spans a genuinely varied portfolio, and two of the projects in it show just how different that range can be. One is a 6 megawatt hydropower plant on the Rupingazi River in Embu County, a locally owned energy investment already under construction using the developer's own funding, with a development finance institution and a commercial bank both showing early interest in financing its next stage.
Getting there has involved updating the plant's environmental and social impact assessment and improving its financial model, alongside a climate vulnerability assessment now underway, work aimed at strengthening a project that could help build confidence in small-scale, locally driven hydropower more broadly.
Njuguna describes a shift he's watched happen over time, in how developers themselves understand what UNDP actually does.
Where UNDP was once seen mainly as a source of grants, he now sees a much stronger, more direct link being built between developers and the financiers who can actually fund them through to completion, a shift he expects to keep gaining ground as more of these projects reach financial close and start telling their own success stories.
“A lot of project developers in the past have seen UNDP just as a grant operator, but now they see that there is a strong linkage in the work that we are doing with financiers.”
Dagmawit Shiferaw Dabi
UNDP Ethiopia
Many promising businesses in Ethiopia struggle to access the kind of financing that would let them grow, which can hold back innovation, job creation, and the development of entirely new sectors. A new facility, developed jointly by the National Bank of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority, and UNDP, is being built to address that directly. Rather than lending only to individual businesses, the facility is designed to invest both in SMEs and startups themselves and in other funds, extending its reach further across the country's small business sector, with part of its capital specifically set aside for climate-oriented enterprises.
Dagmawit Shiferaw, Director of the Innovative Finance Lab, describes the process behind a facility like this as inseparable from its eventual outcome. Projects are selected from the outset based on their potential bankability and ability to interest investors such as climate funds, which means the work of designing a strong project and the work of eventually financing it are connected from very early on.
PISTA's role in this facility has focused on its climate dimension specifically, helping shape the green investment criteria and taxonomy that will guide which companies the fund eventually selects and finances. The facility is now in an advanced stage of setup and fundraising. A fund manager has already been appointed and a strong pipeline of SMEs and startups has been identified. Early support has also reached dozens of enterprises through grants and training, with regulatory work underway as the facility prepares for its first close.
“The potential impact is to unlock financing. Most of the time, first, meeting with investors is a challenge, and second, designing your projects in a way that is attractive to investors is also a challenge. When you have PISTA supporting you and helping to address the missing aspects of your project, you become much more bankable.”
Peace Kaliisa Kobusingye
UNDP Rwanda
Rwanda's first electric bus company, IZI Electric, is already running. Eight buses are on the road, and the country's first battery laboratory, run by the same company, is now in service. That lab is doing more than keeping IZI's own fleet running, it has already serviced more than 10,000 electric vehicles across Rwanda, with over 150 leasing and sales contracts now in place. Rwanda depends heavily on imported fuel, and the transport sector carries real cost and pollution burdens as a result. Part of what makes this model relevant beyond Rwanda's borders is that it was built specifically for African operating conditions, rather than adapted from somewhere else. Financing support, provided alongside other technical assistance partners, has focused on investor outreach and grant mobilization as IZI Electric looks toward regional expansion.
A second, earlier-stage initiative Kobusingye is also connected to is exploring how financing can better support businesses working on more resilient, climate-smart food systems in Rwanda, including newer mechanisms like payments for ecosystem services and carbon credits. The work is still in its early design phase, with feasibility studies and environmental assessments underway to help identify which businesses and financing approaches could eventually form a viable pipeline.
For Rwanda specifically, Kobusingye is candid about what's still missing. Access to finance remains one of the country's biggest constraints on renewable energy, and most projects are still under development or at an early stage, not yet far enough along to attract the institutions that could eventually finance them. What she wants from Energy for Growth in Africa is more support, enough to help these projects reach the point where international financiers are ready to engage.
"And specifically for Rwanda, it is definitely a very good opportunity for us because access to finance is a big challenge. Most of our renewable energy projects are still under development or at an early stage, and we hope that we can receive more support to make them viable for these institutions to take them on."
Fernanda Ribeiro
BODIVA
Angola has real potential for renewable energy, but attracting long-term investment for it has been difficult without the right financial tools in place. BODIVA, the country's stock and debt exchange, is working alongside commercial banks BFA and BAI to build the capacity needed to issue thematic bonds, a financing instrument able to channel long-term capital specifically toward projects like solar, hydropower, and green hydrogen. With PISTA's support, the technical and institutional foundations for Angola's sustainable bond market have been strengthened, and that work is now translating into a tangible market transaction.
In August 2026, the Capital Markets Commission approved the prospectus and registration of BAI's Sustainability Bond, with a public offering of up to Kz 50 billion, approximately USD 54.5 million, and scope to increase the amount depending on investor demand. PISTA-supported technical assistance to BAI, BODIVA and the Capital Markets Commission contributed to bringing the transaction to this stage. At the same time, BFA is advancing its own sustainable bond preparations, including the development of a Second Party Opinion with PISTA support. Together, these developments mark an important step toward building a domestic sustainable finance market capable of mobilising long-term capital for Angola's sustainable development priorities.
Ribeiro is direct about what was missing before this work began, not just good projects, but the instruments, the technical capacity, and the coordination across institutions needed to actually finance them. Her account of the process is less a single transaction and more an attempt to build something durable, a shared set of criteria and a common language around sustainable finance that different Angolan institutions can use consistently, so that access to capital comes with the transparency and reporting international investors expect.
In a separate initiative, Rome Centre is also looking at supporting work to strengthen electricity distribution and add solar capacity across Angola's Benguela and Bié provinces, part of a wider push to expand access along the Lobito Corridor, an area of growing importance to the country's economic development. Preliminary technical designs for both provinces are already complete, and the project is included in Angola's Public Investment Programme. If it moves forward, it's expected to bring more than 55,000 new electricity connections to underserved municipalities in the region.
“With PISTA, we created this ecosystem. It’s about creating a common sustainable language across most of our projects.”
Atta Pascal
UNDP Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire's electricity system still relies heavily on gas, which is part of why the government has set a target of reaching 45 percent renewable energy by 2030. Getting there will take more than public investment, since the country also needs private capital at a scale public financing alone can't provide. In Divo, one project working toward that target is now close to construction.
The plan is a 76 megawatt power plant that runs on cocoa residues, turning agricultural waste from a crop already central to the country's economy into a steady, reliable source of renewable electricity for the national grid. Because the plant draws directly on cocoa byproducts, it also creates a more circular relationship between farming and energy, bringing additional value to the cocoa sector and the rural communities connected to it, alongside the broader gains for the grid itself.
The project has already covered significant ground. Financial modelling and the environmental and social assessment work are complete, and negotiations over the concession and tariff are advanced. Most of the required equity has already been secured too, with the remaining financing structure now being finalized.
From here, Rome Centre is looking at how it could support the project further, through a detailed analysis of the biomass itself to characterize its emissions profile, alongside a pilot that would pair biomass collection with a demonstration of agroforestry renewal on the surrounding land. Pascal describes the underlying problem this kind of support is meant to solve in fairly plain terms, a bankable project without financing on one side, and a financier without a bankable project to back on the other. He also points to something less visible from the outside, that Italy's support for climate and energy work extends well beyond any single programme, spanning instruments that touch clean energy, green infrastructure, and sustainable agriculture.
“We have a sort of bridge between project developers and financiers. Sometimes there are projects which are bankable, but they don’t have financing. Sometimes, also, you have financiers, but they don’t see the projects that are bankable.”
Mohamed Bayoumi
UNDP Egypt
Egypt's industrial and commercial sectors have a significant role to play in the country's energy transition, and one project now in preparation is approaching that role differently than a single large plant would. Rather than building one facility, the plan spreads 200 megawatts of solar capacity across 20 separate government-owned sites, each financed, installed, and operated by an independent power producer. It's more coordination and more moving parts than a single contract would require, but it's also a structure designed to be replicated well beyond its first phase, potentially across many more sites in the future.
The Central Bank of Egypt and relevant ministries are already engaged, and international financiers have confirmed early interest as discussions with local banking partners on the proposed credit facility continue.
Bayoumi describes what's distinctive about this kind of support in terms of how present it stays throughout the process, closer to shared problem-solving than to a technical assistance application that gets submitted and then waits for a response from a distance.
He also points to something structural behind the project, that Cassa Depositi e Prestiti's involvement marks the first time the Italian institution has financed projects outside Italy, a dynamic he sees as a genuine two-way opportunity, UNDP's global network on one side and a new type of financing mechanism on the other.
“It’s not just technical assistance, it’s technical assistance with proactive engagement. The PISTA team provides very clear, focused guidance on how to apply for this technical assistance. They lead you through the process.”
Tom Sengalama
UNDP Uganda
Uganda imports most of the fertilizer its farmers rely on, leaving them exposed to costs and supply disruptions well outside their control. One project Sengalama works on is a large fertilizer plant designed to produce ammonia domestically using hydropower-based green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels.
A joint development agreement is already signed with Uganda's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, and off-take agreements already cover 60 percent of the plant's future production. Financing discussions are underway too, across multiple development finance institutions and strategic investors. A second project is an overhaul of waste management infrastructure in Masaka City, addressing how municipal and healthcare waste gets collected and treated, and reducing the methane emissions that come with poor disposal.
The benefits are designed to reach well beyond city services. Informal waste collectors, local SMEs, and healthcare workers stand to gain from safer handling practices and new economic opportunities, alongside the more visible improvements for residents, schools, and businesses.
Thanks to a bilateral cooperation agreement between Uganda and Italy, the project is now moving from design into implementation. Across projects, Sengalama describes something he sees as distinct about PISTA's approach, that it stays engaged well past the initial guidance stage, building capacity at the country level rather than handing over advice and stepping back.
“PISTA is not only providing technical support, but it is also mobilizing and building capacity at the country level, to help the implementers of this technical assistance get much more involved, get a better understanding of what is out there, and prepare to be part of the bigger picture of the investment.”
The work behind these ten conversations is made possible by the Government of Italy, through the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, the main funding partner behind PISTA and Energy for Growth in Africa.
