Greenovations Africa 2: Bridging Unpaid Care Work and Climate Financing to Empower Women Green Entrepreneurs' Climate Action
Across Africa and Latin America, women play a vital role in climate action through green entrepreneurship, often extending their care roles into environmental stewardship in areas such as sustainable agriculture, waste management and renewable energy. In Africa, women represent over 58% of the self‑employed population, yet their ability to thrive in green sectors is constrained by unpaid care work and limited access to effective support, particularly climate finance. Structural, cultural and institutional barriers – such as weak enabling policies and exclusion from financial systems – continue to limit the growth and recognition of their contributions.
This project connects Africa and Latin America to accelerate women’s entrepreneurial leadership in climate action by addressing two interlinked barriers across the entrepreneurial journey: unpaid care work and climate change. Through knowledge co‑creation, the project works directly with women entrepreneurs to identify their needs, understand care and climate constraints and co‑design solutions, drawing on lessons from Latin America.
Under Greenovations 2, UNU-VIE leads the development of a model and platform to showcase women entrepreneurs' positive contribution to climate action, develop accessible, community-informed tools that simplify and localize climate finance requirements for grassroot women entrepreneurs, supports co-design of 100 gender-just and care solutions in collaboration with women green entrepreneurs and enterprise support organizations.
Furthermore, the project promotes engagement with Indigenous women’s organizations in Africa and Latin America to ensure culturally grounded, community‑owned approaches and solutions.
Led by UNU‑VIE and funded by IDRC, the project is implemented with Fundación Avina, the UNFCCC Secretariat, AIIKS, WEAC, and NCIC.
