Enterprise Brief: Kidogo Early Childhood Centres
Published: 06 July 2015
Kidogo Early Childhood Centres establish affordable and safe childcare options in East Africa’s informal settlements (slums), allowing mothers and caregivers to work and attend school. Kidogo uses a micro-franchising model supporting local women to start self-sustaining childcare centres. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Lighting Up Women's Lives
Published: 06 July 2015
Lighting Up Women’s Lives has developed a model to support women entrepreneurship and facilitate affordable access to solar lights and chargers to rural villages of the Kavango region by creating synergies with the existing network and supply chain of established handicrafts companies. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Loja de Energias
Published: 06 July 2015
Loja de Energias supplies households in rural Mozambique with clean and renewable energy sources. Its energy shops are managed by women who work with community leaders in order to stimulate the purchase of renewable energy systems. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: RECAPO CBO
Published: 06 July 2015
RECAPO CBO offers clean, renewable and affordable energy to residents in rural Malawi, where over 90% of the population has no access to grid electricity. Its affordable Pay-As-You-Go model allows low-income households to exchange expensive and polluting lighting and electrical systems for solar solutions. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: RISE
Published: 06 July 2015
RISE sells solar products to smallholder farmers in rural Tanzania by leveraging innovative consumer financing and utilising existing distribution networks by its partners. RISE’s purpose is to make renewable energy services available and affordable to consumers in Tanzania’s most rural regions. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: RK Renew Energy PLC
Published: 06 July 2015
RK Renew Energy PLC uses local resources to produce improved ceramic cookstoves. Women from rural and semi-urban areas are trained to build the ceramic stoves and to distribute and sell them in Ethiopian refugee camps. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: SavvyLoo
Published: 06 July 2015
SavvyLoo combines a waterless toilet with a low-tech solution to generate energy from human waste. The system is designed to separate liquids from solids using solar heat and dehydration, thus reducing harmful pathogens. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: STM Solar Technologies Manufacturing
Published: 06 July 2015
STM Solar Technologies Manufacturing is the first company in Ethiopia to offer solar power solutions for electricity and lighting. The enterprise also provides families with micro-finance credit to acquire such systems, as well as training and repair services. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Village Energy
Published: 06 July 2015
Village Energy is building a rural renewable energy technician network to service and sell solar systems. It recruits and trains technicians as franchisee entrepreneurs directly at the village level, providing vocational training, business set-up support, branded marketing, and spare part and product inventory. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Vula Mobile
Published: 06 July 2015
Vula Mobile has developed a mobile phone app that empowers rural health professionals to provide efficient and effective eye care by accessing accurate information and connecting to specialists. The higher quality of primary care to patients reduces the impact of treatable and reversible illnesses. Read more
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Increasing the impact of social enterprises in developing and emerging economies
Published: 25 June 2015 Aline Margaux Wachner, Lisa M. Hanley, Tim Weiss
A recent large-scale survey published by Zeppelin University and Siemens Stiftung generally support the idea that social enterprises can have a positive impact on poverty reduction. However, it also reveals some caveats, which have led us to derive concrete recommendations for action. Read more
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What role for eco-entrepreneurship in the Post-2015 agenda?
Published: 19 June 2015 Anais Mangin, Helen Marquard
The Millennium Development Goals have shaped development cooperation in the last 15 years, and there has been progress towards eliminating poverty worldwide. Nevertheless, much remains to be done. Read more
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Explore SEED through the new Virtual Exhibition and learn about the SEED Winners’ impacts through the new SEED Case Studies
Published: 27 May 2015
SEED is launching a new interactive multimedia feature which will enable you to look into all aspects of SEED’s activities: the Virtual Exhibition, as well as new in-depth Case Studies that have emerged from the latest SEED research. Read more
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Green Heat, a SEED Story from Uganda
Published: 26 May 2015
Green Heat is an enterprise installing and marketing biogas digesters that convert decaying organic material from latrines and agricultural waste into biogas fuel for cooking and heating. By using biogas digesters, urban and rural households, schools, prisons, hospitals and tourist lodges in Uganda reduce their dependence on firewood and charcoal, improve their waste management systems, and help reduce deforestation and greenhouse gas emission rates related to methane release. Read more
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From telegraph to internet – How can entrepreneurship help bridge the digital divide?
Published: 17 May 2015 Jona Liebl
In the middle of the 19th century, the invention of the telegraph was transforming societies: instead of sending letters by horses or ships which could take weeks or even months, messages could now be delivered within minutes. Read more
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The SEED Virtual Exhibition - to be launched on 27 May 2015!
Published: 11 May 2015
Embark with us on a journey towards SEED's vision of a world of flourishing communities where social and environmental entrepreneurship drives sustainable development. Experience how SEED Winners achieve measurable impacts and see how SEED is joining forces with others to build an enabling environment for eco-entrepreneurship. Read more
Greening South Africa’s economy: improved business development support for social and environmental enterprises
Published: 06 May 2015 Julia Rohe-Frydrych, Rest Kanju
According to World Bank, South Africa ranks as an upper-middle income economy, representing the second-largest economy in Africa. While disposing of an abundant supply of natural resources and a modern infrastructure, unemployment, poverty, and inequality remain a challenge. Read more
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Imagine an Earth Hour with Clean Energy for All
Published: 28 March 2015 Amélie Heuër, Carolin Ehrensperger
Today, on March 28th, thousands of cities around the world will turn off their lights during Earth Hour to draw attention to the urgent need to act on climate change. Even though the devastating impacts of climate change are becoming ever more visible, global carbon emissions – one of the main contributor to climate change – continue to rise at an alarming rate. Read more
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Preparing women entrepreneurs for tomorrow’s reality
Published: 08 March 2015 Anna Fälth
In October 2014, UN Women Executive Director proposed 2030 to be the expiry date for gender inequality (UN Women). How can we make this bold goal a reality? Where do we start? Let’s start by envisioning the world in 2030. Read more
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Protecting wildlife by turning elephant dung into paper: A business case?
Published: 03 March 2015 Carolin Ehrensperger, Jona Liebl
It has long been acknowledged that the equilibrium between humans and wildlife is one that can hang in the delicate balance at the best of times, a devastating one-sided scaling at worst. Read more
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SEED Awards 2015 - Apply by 31 March 2015!
Published: 06 February 2015
In 2015 SEED will make available up to 31 SEED Awards, for which SEED has received support from the European Union, the Government of Flanders, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the international law firm Hogan Lovells. Additional support is provided by the Government of the Netherlands and other SEED Partners. Read more
GroFin’s investment for the future: Kenyan women entrepreneurs are good ‘jockeys’
Published: 08 November 2014 Rishi Khubchandani
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SEED South Africa Symposium 2014: Advancing the Green Economy
Published: 07 November 2014
At the SEED South Africa Symposium, held over 19 and 20 March 2014, over 150 participants from government, private sector, media, academia, development, and civil society organisations, and including around 40 entrepreneurs, gathered at the CSIR in Pretoria to exchange experience, knowledge and perspectives that could advance the growth of socio-environmental entrepreneurship in South Africa. Read more
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Social and Green Enterprises – How to Create Enabling Frameworks to Increase their Contribution to Sustainable Development?
Published: 04 November 2014 Amélie Heuër
Over the last four years, SEED has hosted a series of unique multi-stakeholder for a focussed on the Green Economy and Africa - the SEED Symposia - where each year innovative and promising start-up enterprises, that won a SEED Award for their remarkable efforts to address social and environmental challenges at the grassroots, are presented. Read more
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Promoting entrepreneurship for sustainable development: why, and how?
Published: 23 October 2014 Helen Marquard
When UNEP, UNDP and IUCN decided to register the SEED Initiative as a Type II partnership at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, they clearly thought they were on to something – but possibly not quite what SEED is now. Read more
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