The round will accelerate product development and customer growth as the company scales to meet rising demand for flexible, decentralised energy infrastructure.

OAE’s flagship product, EnergyPro, is a cloud-based software platform that enables energy wheeling – the process of delivering electricity from decentralised renewable producers to distributed consumers via existing transmission infrastructure.

OAE’s platform automates the backend processes including metering, risk management, and forecasting – ensuring that energy generation and consumption loads are efficiently matched in real time.

OAE was founded in 2021 as South Africa accelerated its transition away from coal dependency. The country’s power grid struggles with reliability issues, and its energy production relies on an aging stock of coal-fired plants.

However, as distributed renewable energy production continues to grow it cannot efficiently be matched with consumer demand, leading to an excess of clean energy, despite unmet consumer needs for power.

“Open Access Energy has built a software-led solution for a real-world problem – enabling renewables to flow through existing infrastructure, said Andrew Darge, E3 Capital’s lead on the transaction, “The opportunity for digital technology to support municipal wheeling, embedded generation, and transparent settlement at scale is exactly what Africa’s power sector needs to drive the transition to lower carbon economies.”

“South Africa’s energy future will be shaped by private generation and local distribution of clean power,” said Morgan DeFoort, a partner at Equator VC, “Open Access Energy is building critical infrastructure to make this possible. We’re backing a team that combines unique technical capability, a strong understanding of the evolving southern Africa energy market, and deep relationships with municipal and private sector stakeholders.”

“Private generation is central to South Africa’s energy transition. This funding allows us to scale the tools that Independent Power Producers and Energy Traders need to participate in and benefit from the liberalised energy market. We’re proud to have the support of leading investors who understand the opportunity and are committed to building long-term impact,” shared Gerjo Hoffman, CEO of Open Access Energy

“Building on this momentum, we can now focus on scaling our platform and shaping the future of the local energy market,” said James Irons, chairman of the Open Access Energy Board. “We will continue to seek out further strategic investment options in the near future, with specific interests in securing a local investment partner.”

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The firm plans to use the capital to support early-stage startups developing innovative solutions in energy, agriculture, and mobility.

African climate tech startups are usually hit with funding limitations compared to companies in developed economies, where government subsidies provide required support. 

Instead, African startups rely heavily on development finance institutions (DFIs), foundations, and endowments, making them vulnerable to global financial changes. 

With aid budgets shrinking, DFIs have reduced funding, increasing the pressure on African startups—particularly in climate tech, which demands higher capital investment.

With this new fund, Equator aims to bridge the financing gap and attract private investors to the region. “We are needed more than ever to invest in technology and scalable ventures tackling fundamental climate challenges,” said Nijhad Jamal, managing partner at Equator. 

“These investments will help reduce dependence on aid and instead bring more global private capital into the region.”

Equator intends to invest in 15 to 18 startups, providing funding ranging from $750,000 to $1 million for seed-stage companies and up to $2 million for those in Series A. 

Beyond capital, the firm will assist startups with unit economics, governance, and expansion strategies. A portion of the fund will also be reserved for follow-on investments, with Equator mobilising its limited partners (LPs) as co-investors to bring in additional equity, debt, or blended financing.

“In several of our portfolio companies, we’re the only Africa-focused investor on the cap table — that’s the role we see ourselves playing in this ecosystem,” Jamal explained. “Until our most recent investments, we had a 100% success rate in bringing our investors directly into the ventures we backed.”

Equator’s investment focus aligns with the pressing climate challenges in Africa, a continent that contributes less than 3% of global energy-related CO₂ emissions but suffers disproportionately from climate change. The firm backs startups that address both economic and environmental challenges arising from these issues.

While climate tech investments have grown, changing market conditions have altered investor expectations. Initially, the emphasis was on social impact, but today, investors demand clearer economic value from climate solutions. 

Companies must now prove profitability and strong unit economics rather than relying on impact alone.

Jamal noted key areas where climate startups are showing commercial viability. These include cost-effective electric vehicles, precise climate insurance for extreme weather, and AI-driven logistics solutions. Equator-backed companies like Roam Electric, Ibisa, and Leta are developing such innovations.

“The narrative has shifted,” Jamal said. “It’s no longer just about development and impact. It’s about mobilising private capital for scalable ventures that solve problems. The focus today is even more on things like unit economics and the path to profitability, because people know there isn’t just [enough] capital to throw at ventures to scale without thinking about monetisation, real economics, profitability or exits.”

Unlike early cleantech startups such as Sun King, M-KOPA, and d.light—companies that raised billions and are now approaching IPOs—the new wave of climate startups operates in a more structured ecosystem. This environment allows them to use capital more efficiently and position themselves for acquisitions rather than billion-dollar IPOs.

Jamal predicts that instead of massive public listings, African climate tech startups will see $100 million exits, which can still yield strong investor returns.

The industry has already witnessed some consolidation, including BBOXX’s acquisition of PEG Africa in 2022 and the merger of Equator-backed SteamaCo with Shyft Power Solutions.

To achieve sustainable exits, startups must balance capital structuring. Climate tech attracted the highest amount of debt financing last year, and Jamal emphasised the importance of managing equity dilution. 

“If equity is used for everything, including working capital, dilution will be too high for investors or founders to see meaningful returns. But as debt and other financial instruments become more available, we’ll start seeing commercial exits, even if they’re more bite-sized,” he explained.

Equator’s leadership team includes Jamal and Morgan DeFoort. Before co-founding Equator, Jamal worked at BlackRock and Acumen Fund, where he led cleantech investments. 

He also founded Moja Capital, an early-stage investment fund with a strategy aligned with Equator. Among his notable investments are SunCulture, a Kenyan off-grid solar company, as well as Apollo Agriculture and Odyssey Energy Solutions.

The post Equator Raises $55M for African Climate Tech, Offering $750K-$1M for Seed | Up to $2M for Series A appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Equator invests in low-carbon technologies and business model innovation to tackle global warming and boost communities’ and businesses’ resilience.

Startups in seed and Series A stages across the energy, agriculture and mobility sectors where lots of untapped market opportunities keep growing, are Equator’s major focus as it takes these companies from their earliest to growth stages.

Equator is looking to invest in ventures that leverage technology, such as hardware, software or business model innovation, to bring new ideas to regions with limited innovation. Focusing on clean energy, agriculture and mobility, the fund aims to support technical founders with domain expertise who can create solutions to alleviate the effects of climate change on income disparity in Africa.

With the goal of making up to 15 investments throughout the fund’s projected time period, Equator typically provides pre-Series B clean tech startups in sub-Saharan Africa with round sizes of $10 million or less. For seed stages, the VC invests between $1 to $2 million, and for Series A stages, it writes checks of between $2 to $4 million. 

With teams in Nairobi, Lagos, London, and Colorado, Equator is also collaborating with Factor[e] Ventures – an organization of venture builders and pre-seed investors – in sourcing deals and conducting due diligence, as well as leveraging its post-investment support platform for the benefit of its portfolio companies as they scale.

Equator anticipates capitalizing on the rising awareness of climate tech’s significance and its role in tackling climate change. Even though it is far behind fintech, investments in the field are gradually being used to lower the cost of solar systems and batteries, and allowing more individuals and businesses to access them through pay-as-you-go models.

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