75% of climate finance flows to Europe, the United States, and China. Venture capital in Africa has fallen 87%, yet Africa will represent 1 in 4 humans by 2050. Of $2.7 trillion deployed in climate finance, less than $1 billion reached solar and off-grid electric. The misallocation lands hardest on the women already stabilizing systems with no formal recognition or resource.
The three convenings produced a consistent argument: the challenge is not the absence of capital but the absence of the connective tissue — the shared framing, the risk reframe, the coordinated sequencing — that allows capital to flow toward the solutions that already exist. Jacqueline Novogratz named the mechanism in Nairobi: the Acumen model deploys $30 million of philanthropic capital to unlock $300 million in markets that do not yet exist. Philanthropy and venture capital do not talk to each other, and that silence is costing lives.
"Moral imagination is a prerequisite for systems change. The current economic model is a values failure — fixing it requires leaders with courage, not just competence. Hard head, soft heart — both, simultaneously, unapologetically."
— Session participant, Nairobi Convening, May 2026
CAPITAL THAT
REACHES WOMEN
WHAT THE CONVENINGS SURFACED
At Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Reema Nanavaty proposed a concrete mechanism: a Blended Finance Climate Welfare Facility for informal women workers, bundling parametric heat insurance, early warning systems, cooling infrastructure near work sites, and income replacement. HERA's model, currently reaching 300,000 informal women workers in India with parametric insurance that pays out when heat threatens their health and income, was named as proof that this is not theoretical.
At Women Deliver in Naarm (Melbourne), participants called repeatedly for the economic case to be made explicit: investment in care and community health must be framed in terms that engage the private sector,
national governments, and multilateral bodies. The ICJ Advisory Opinion on climate change was named as an underutilized legal tool that could reshape the risk calculus for capital deployment in climate-vulnerable contexts.
At the Project Dandelion Convening in Nairobi, the capital misallocation argument was quantified and given a moral frame. The ask is a correction.
Catalytic capital must be patient, risk-tolerant, and willing to go first. The coordination failure between DFIs — where competitive dynamics mean that if one moves on terms all others follow regardless of merit — was named as a structural problem requiring a structural solution.
CAPITAL THAT REACHES WOMEN
75% of climate finance flows to Europe, the United States, and China. Venture capital in Africa has fallen 87%, yet Africa will represent 1 in 4 humans by 2050. Of $2.7 trillion deployed in climate finance, less than $1 billion reached solar and off-grid electric. The misallocation lands hardest on the women already stabilizing systems with no formal recognition or resource.
The three convenings produced a consistent argument: the challenge is not the absence of capital but the absence of the connective tissue — the shared framing, the risk reframe, the coordinated sequencing — that allows capital to flow toward the solutions that already exist. Jacqueline Novogratz named the mechanism in Nairobi: the Acumen model deploys $30 million of philanthropic capital to unlock $300 million in markets that do not yet exist. Philanthropy and venture capital do not talk to each other, and that silence is costing lives.
"Moral imagination is a prerequisite for systems change. The current economic model is a values failure — fixing it requires leaders with courage, not just competence. Hard head, soft heart — both, simultaneously, unapologetically."
— Session participant, Nairobi Convening, May 2026
WHAT THE CONVENINGS SURFACED
At Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Reema Nanavaty proposed a concrete mechanism: a Blended Finance Climate Welfare Facility for informal women workers, bundling parametric heat insurance, early warning systems, cooling infrastructure near work sites, and income replacement. HERA's model, currently reaching 300,000 informal women workers in India with parametric insurance that pays out when heat threatens their health and income, was named as proof that this is not theoretical.
​
At Women Deliver in Naarm (Melbourne), participants called repeatedly for the economic case to be made explicit: investment in care and community health must be framed in terms that engage the private sector, national governments, and multilateral bodies. The ICJ Advisory Opinion on climate change was named as an underutilized legal tool that could reshape the risk calculus for capital deployment in climate-vulnerable contexts.
​
At the Project Dandelion Convening in Nairobi, the capital misallocation argument was quantified and given a moral frame. The ask is a correction. Catalytic capital must be patient, risk-tolerant, and willing to go first. The coordination failure between DFIs — where competitive dynamics mean that if one moves on terms all others follow regardless of merit — was named as a structural problem requiring a structural solution.
