Stella Tai (second from right) meets with representatives of SunCulture in Kenya.
At the end of 2021, Stella Tai, Manager of Stewardship Investing Impact and Analysis for Praxis Mutual Funds®, visited her home country of Kenya to witness the impact community investments can make.
Through visits to four different sites in Kenya, Stella gained a more nuanced and personal understanding of the work made possible by Praxis.
“I’ve come to understand a great deal about impact investing,” Stella said. “But before this trip, my understanding of this work often took place behind a computer screen, over the phone, or at a conference.”
Praxis has invested in and supported several organizations through partner Calvert Impact Capital. These organizations serve as a catalyst for change in Kenyan communities.
SunCulture
The first stop in Kenya was at SunCulture, an organization that uses off-grid solar technology to provide farms with reliable access to water, irrigation, lighting, and mobile charging to meet the power needs of over 520 million households across Africa.
Local women farmers can access solar-powered farming technology because of SunCulture.
Since acquiring her solar-powered water pump, production on her farm has gone up significantly – which has created more income for her family and helped her pay the school fees for her four children. Once she pays off the current system, she hopes to go back to SunCulture and purchase a drip irrigation system, which will make her farming even easier and further increase her production.
BioLite
The second stop on the tour of community development investment sites in Kenya included a visit to the BioLite offices in Nairobi.BioLite’s mission is to help end energy poverty by creating clean-fuel-powered cookstoves that decrease fuel consumption and reduce toxic fumes emissions by 70%. These stoves also provide safe and reliable ways to cook food, charge electronic devices, and generate light for economically disadvantaged families in Kenya.
With a focus on B2B partnerships, Biolite has grown rapidly and now has a 25% market share in sub-Saharan Africa in over 20 countries. They are also certified by the United Nations to sell carbon credits and are using this income to reduce the price of the stove for consumers – a move that increased their accessibility to people with low incomes.
Lendable Africa and Watu Credit
The third stop was at Lendable Africa. Lendable provides capital to emerging and frontier market fintech companies and provides technology, asset management, and advisory services to leading investors.
Watu Credit provides financing for motorbikes used as a type of taxi service.
Founded in 2015, Watu Credit has seen rapid growth by providing financing for motorbikes popularly known as “boda bodas” in Kenya and a few other East African countries. The motorbikes are commonly used as a type of taxi service in both urban and rural areas, which provides the owner a way to make an income and support themselves and their families.
As the pandemic started, Watu Credit took the time to work on their systems to improve internal efficiency, reducing the time it takes for customers to get a motorbike – now just a two-hour window from start to finish. This boosted business for the company, while helping thousands of Kenyans to start working as boda boda drivers.
Before the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, Watu financed around 5,000 motorbikes a month. After COVID, they have seen demand rise and are now selling 20,000-25,000 motorbikes a month. Watu now has 170,000 active customers around Kenya, and impacts thousands of small-business owners across Kenya.
Praxis Mutual Funds supports organizations like these through investments in Calvert Impact Capital, an impact-investing institution that helps people around the world through community development financing. It’s part of the Praxis commitment to invest approximately 1% of each of its funds to benefit neighborhoods and individuals through community development investments.