2.4 billion people sit at the intersection of climate vulnerability and financial exclusion — doubly exposed to risk and in need of resilience.
Climate shocks hit hardest where the financial cushion is thinnest, and for the small business owners, smallholder farmers, and low-income communities Accion serves, that cushion is often nonexistent. Without access to financial services, people can’t invest in adapting to a changing climate. Without investment in climate resilience, people look too risky to financial service providers, which locks them out of the very services that could help. It’s time to break this cycle.
Research from the Center for Financial Inclusion on digitization, financial services, and climate resilience shows the scale of the problem.
1 in 3
micro and small businesses across five major cities had already been hit by a drought, flood, or other environmental shock — in Delhi, it’s closer to two in three.
Climate finance spans across mitigation, transition, adaption, and financial resilience. For the populations Accion serves, resilience and adaptation are the immediate priority. Most of the mitigation-focused climate finance flowing today never reaches these communities.
The ClimaFii Alliance is a five-year effort begun in 2025 with BFA Global and Upaya Social Ventures, backed by Shell Foundation, UK FCDO, and the Gates Foundation — bringing clean energy and climate- resilient financing to microentrepreneurs across India and Sub-Saharan Africa. To date, the program includes:
20
early-stage enterprises supported in India and sub-Saharan Africa
30+
FSPs engaged
10+
ecosystem partners
$230K
in FSP commitments unlocked in Year 1
What we’ve learned about scaling inclusive climate finance
Reflections from year one of the ClimaFii Alliance in India and sub-Saharan Africa
What the model looks like on the ground
As an example of this tailored approach, Aphelion Finance and Rudra Solar built a solar dryer financing product in northern India around the 3–4 month monsoon income gap that standard EMI structures ignore — an advance EMI structure priced at a flat 10% through a SIDBI partnership, well below the area’s prevailing rate.
In one case, Rudra Solar‘s clear, aggregable demand for solar dryers brought it into active conversations with three separate financial service providers at once — proof that a strong customer pipeline is itself a financing asset. Working across multiple financing partners also splits the risk, making funding more accessible for these projects and the communities they serve.
In Uganda, one $15,000 grant from ClimaFii’s sub-grant pool unlocked roughly $14,000 in debt financing for EnerGrow within two months, enabling 200 women-led households and microenterprises to acquire electric pressure cookers they couldn’t otherwise finance.
Closing the climate protection gap
The ClimaFii Resilience Innovation Lab
Year 1 of the ClimaFii Alliance pointed at the same opportunity: pilots that paired credit with insurance or a guarantee consistently drew more capital and better terms than credit alone. But this work was highly custom and manual, moving forward one pilot at a time.
The ClimaFii Resilience Innovation Lab is a joint initiative of Accion and K.M Dastur & Co Ltd, under the ClimaFii Alliance. It was built to scale this work and close the gap for low-income households and MSMEs. Accion brings enterprise pipeline, distribution relationships, financing pathways and gender-inclusive design; KMD brings 50+ years of insurance and reinsurance practice, actuarial and trigger design, and regulatory know-how across jurisdictions.
Closing the gap between climate shocks and the people who absorb them
How the ClimaFii Resilience Innovation Lab is working to bring climate risk protection to vulnerable communities
Michael Schlein, President and CEO, Accion“Small business owners in emerging economies are already heavily impacted by climate change and unable to afford emission-reducing technologies. We are excited to partner with the Shell Foundation to launch the Climate and Finance Innovations (ClimaFii) Alliance. Through the Alliance, we aim to make affordable financing for clean technologies available to small businesses around the world, helping improve their productivity and the quality of life in their communities.”
Jonathan Berman, CEO at Shell Foundation“The green transition works when it raises people’s incomes. This partnership with Accion aligns fully with our global mission to help microentrepreneurs increase their incomes while reducing emissions through clean energy solutions. Through the Climate and Finance Innovations (ClimaFii) Alliance, and by working with proven partners such as Accion, BFA Global, and Upaya Social Ventures, we are proud to accelerate the expansion of impactful solutions that enable millions of people to improve their livelihoods.”
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2025 Impact Report
