Karen Basiye, Director, Sustainability, and Shared Value, Safaricom PLC./HANDOUT
When Kenya launched the Kenya Energy Transition and Investment Plan in 2024, it made a bold statement about the country we intend to become. It presented a country that would be competitive and inclusive in a climate-resilient economy powered increasingly by clean energy.
The ambition to achieve Net Zero by 2050 and to keep our power grid largely renewable as demand grows is not only an environmental goal but also an economic strategy.
However, ambition alone will not finance the transition. The defining question now is how Kenya designs a practical financing architecture that attracts private investment and reaches communities.
Across the sustainability landscape, the shift from voluntary action to mandatory corporate sustainability and climate-related accountability is also changing the conversation. By July 2028, the cost of inaction will increasingly move from reputational risk to financial consequence. That shift should not be viewed only as compliance pressure; it can become a powerful opportunity to unlock new pools of funding for green growth.
Rather than relying primarily on taxpayer resources or refinancing old debts, Kenya’s fiscal strategy must crowd in private capital. Instruments such as the National Infrastructure Fund, public asset monetisation and public-private partnerships can help mobilise the scale of financing required for clean energy, green transport, sustainable industry dynamics, clean cooking and emerging opportunities such as green hydrogen.
Yet the success of this transition will not be measured only in megawatts, large infrastructure projects or headline investment figures. It will be measured by whether a smallholder farmer in Kajiado or Busia can access a solar-powered water pump; whether a rural cooperative can afford clean energy equipment; and whether young people can build livelihoods around climate-smart agriculture and enterprise. This is where small-scale finance, SACCOs and corporate social investment become the critical last-mile bridge between macro policy and household-level resilience.
At Safaricom, we have seen this potential first-hand through the Safaricom Foundation’s Wezesha Agri programme. In demonstration hubs such as Kuku Ward in Kajiado County and Alupe in Busia County, the programme trains and equips youth and farmers with green technologies, including solar-powered water pumps, solar incubators and biogas systems. These are practical, community-level interventions that translate the national energy transition into tools people can use today.
Through Wezesha Agri, farmers are shifting away from expensive and polluting diesel-powered systems towards solar technology. For many, this can reduce production costs, enable year-round farming, and improve resilience against climate shocks. When complemented by digital platforms such as DigiFarm, these interventions also help address information, data and market-access gaps that often keep small-scale producers from becoming commercially viable.
The next frontier is to connect these decentralised models to larger pools of concessional and blended climate finance. SACCOs, community-based lenders and cooperatives can become distribution channels for green credit lines supported by development, finance institutions and climate funds. Over time, grouped portfolios of small borrowers could even be aggregated into institutional green finance instruments, making last-mile climate action visible and investable.
However, we must be honest about the barriers. Climate risks and socio-economic pressures remain the greatest threat to scaling decentralised clean energy initiatives. A drought, flood, failed harvest or sudden economic shock can wipe out a household’s ability to adopt, maintain or repay investment in green technology.
That is why financing models must be designed around the realities of communities. They must blend affordability, technical support, market access and risk protection. Clean technology cannot succeed if it is offered as a product alone; it must be embedded in ecosystems that help users generate income, manage risk and build resilience.
The global climate finance debate also matters. As wealthy nations are pressed to honour climate finance commitments to developing economies, countries like Kenya must be ready to show how those resources will flow into national budgets, private-sector pipelines and community-level implementation. The credibility of climate finance will depend on whether it reaches the people most exposed to climate risk.
Kenya’s transition will require large infrastructure, progressive regulation and credible public finance. But it will also require trust, partnership and local delivery. If we get the financing architecture right, the energy transition can do more than reduce emissions. It can lower the cost of doing business, strengthen food systems, create youth opportunities and build climate resilience from the ground up.
For business,
this is the moment to move beyond sustainability as a side agenda and recognise
it as a core driver of competitiveness and shared prosperity. For policymakers,
it is the moment to ensure climate finance is accessible not only to major
institutions, but also to the SACCOs, cooperatives, enterprises and communities
doing the hard work of transition on the ground. Kenya’s green future will be
built nationally, but it will be delivered locally.
The writer is the Director, Sustainability, and Shared Value, Safaricom PLC
