ENVenture
Organization Details
ENVenture is a program of New Energy Nexus in Uganda, a subsidiary of Calcef, a 501(c)(3) in the US dba New Energy Nexus (www.newenergynexus.com). We empower local service groups – Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), agricultural cooperatives, and Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) - by equipping them with entrepreneurship skills, energy financing, mentorship, and coaching to launch clean energy businesses that serve people living in Uganda’s last-mile and off-grid communities that lack access to electricity. Our approach involves providing Financing, personalized business coaching, and guiding these enterprises from conception to successful execution of their energy business ideas. This model places the community at the center of energy access delivery to off-grid populations.
Impact Story
Uganda faces significant energy challenges with 58% of the population lacking access to electricity, which is 26.5 million people (equivalent to the population of the Netherlands and Switzerland combined!). Communities in off-grid areas in Uganda rely on various sources of energy such as candles and kerosene lamps for lighting, three-stone cookstoves, and firewood for cooking and boiling water to purify their water to ensure it’s safe for consumption. These activities expose people, especially women, and children to indoor air pollution, a leading cause of over 40,000 deaths annually. The obstacle to clean energy access is not the lack of simple and affordable technologies, but rather the absence of developed delivery systems in rural areas through which low-income earners can get access to these alternative solutions. We need local entrepreneurs. Existing energy companies shy away from scaling their operations in hard-to-reach areas because they are very costly to serve and do not present opportunities for profits.
We have incubated over 181 clean energy enterprises which have created 827 jobs with 70% taken up by women and youth. The enterprises supported have reached over 127,000 end users across the country with households that have adopted clean energy technologies saving over UD$4.5 million in energy costs in 7 years.
Diverse Social Enterprise
The TRANSFORM Support Hub is committed to accelerating diverse owned and led enterprises to build more equitable and resilient supply chains.
