When Eugene Gikonyo, Investment Principal at Mercy Corps Ventures, first left Nairobi to study economics and finance at the University of Sheffield, the young Kenyan imagined a career path like many of his peers - working in hedge funds in London or New York, navigating global markets and managing billion-dollar trades. His sights were set on Wall Street towers and City of London boardrooms, far from the dusty farmlands of rural Africa.
But life rarely unfolds according to plan. After completing his master’s in mathematical trading and finance at Cass Business School, London (now Bayes Business School), he quickly realised that building a career in high finance as an international graduate was far from straightforward.
The visa hurdles were daunting. In 2016, with few options open in the UK, he returned to Nairobi. What felt like a setback at the time turned out to be the most pivotal decision of his life.
“Coming back to Kenya was never the plan,” he recalls. “But looking back, it was the best decision I ever made.”
That return marked the beginning of a new journey - one that would eventually lead him to Mercy Corps Ventures, the impact investment arm of the global humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps. Today, Eugene is one of the voices shaping how venture capital is deployed to build resilience for Africa’s most vulnerable communities, particularly in the face of climate change.
From hedge funds to impact capital
Eugene’s early years back in Nairobi began conventionally enough. When he first set foot into finance, the choice seemed obvious: investment banking. “I joined an investment bank here in Nairobi called Kestrel Capital,” he recalls. Fresh out of school, he was eager to make his mark.
His early work revolved around equities and corporate finance, the kind of high-stakes work that gives banking its edge. But soon, he began to notice the limits of the sector. “On the corporate finance side, not much was happening in terms of activity in the public capital markets,” he explains. Listings had slowed to a trickle, and the excitement that had once defined the industry seemed to have faded.
That lull forced him to reflect on where he wanted to direct his energy. “That led me to sort of pivot my career in finance into what, at the time, was quite new - impact investing.”
The leap led him to work at organizations such as Global Partnerships and Global Innovation Fund. Eugene found his calling in MCV - where capital was not just about returns but also resilience. The opportunity to join Mercy Corps Ventures felt like a natural evolution for Eugene.
Mercy Corps Ventures: A different kind of investor
Founded in 2015, Mercy Corps Ventures was set up with a bold thesis: that early-stage entrepreneurs in emerging markets can build solutions that help communities withstand and adapt to shocks - whether economic, environmental, or social.
“Mercy Corps Ventures sits at a really interesting intersection,” Eugene explains. “We’re a venture fund with an impact-first lens. That gives us the agility of VC and the purpose of a humanitarian organisation.”
MCV is an impact VC fund with the thematic mandate of investing in climate tech startups at the early stage across both Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, says Eugene.
In less than a decade, MCV has invested in more than 60 startups across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Around half of those are in Africa, with a growing focus on climate resilience. “We write relatively small tickets - between $100,000 and $300,000, usually at pre-seed or seed stage,” Eugene explains.
The mandate is sharply focused: backing entrepreneurs who are building tools for communities to prepare for, adapt to, and recover from climate shocks.
Focus on climate adaptation and resilience
When asked about Mercy Corps Ventures’ investment thesis, Eugene is quick to emphasize that the fund takes a thematic approach rather than a sector-specific one. “We’re broadly sector-agnostic,” he explains. “But our focus is on climate adaptation and resilience. That’s the lens through which we view all our investments.”
Global climate finance has largely been tilted toward mitigation - projects and technologies aimed at cutting carbon emissions. Solar farms, wind turbines, electric vehicles, green hydrogen. These are critical, but for Africa, mitigation is not enough. The continent contributes less than 4% of global emissions, yet bears a disproportionate burden of climate disasters.
“Over the years, about 80 to 90 percent of climate finance has gone into mitigation,” Eugene notes. “Adaptation and resilience are underfunded areas. For us, that’s the gap we want to address. It’s where we believe we can catalyze meaningful change.”
Within that umbrella, the fund’s work is organized into three core sub-themes. The first is adaptive food systems and agriculture, where startups are rethinking how smallholder farmers and food systems can withstand shocks from climate change. The second is climate-smart technologies, ranging from e-mobility and battery swapping solutions to decentralized energy distribution and trading. The third is inclusive climate fintech, where innovation helps vulnerable communities gain access to critical financial tools like crop insurance, parametric insurance, and supply chain financing.
Stories from the field: Soil, fish, and insurance
MCV’s portfolio reads like a mosaic of Africa’s frontline innovators. Each company is tackling a very specific pain point that climate change has magnified.
In Tanzania, a startup called Mazao Hub is bringing soil testing and weather-based advisory services to smallholder farmers. The model is simple: local agro-dealers serve as distribution points for testing kits and advisory services. Farmers, often operating on tiny plots, get data they never had before - what nutrients their soil lacks, what crops are best suited, when rains are expected. For farmers who have long relied on guesswork, the difference can be profound.
In Kenya, AgRails is using AI to build climate-risk analytics that can support insurers. By mapping patterns of rainfall, soil degradation, and pest outbreaks, it helps insurance companies design products that are more accurate and affordable. The goal is to break the cycle where farmers remain uninsured because risks are poorly understood.
Then there is Pula, perhaps one of the continent’s most recognised names in parametric crop insurance. By linking payouts to weather data - rainfall thresholds, temperature levels, drought indexes - Pula has insured millions of farmers across Africa. In places where a missed rainy season can mean hunger, that financial buffer can be the thin line between resilience and ruin.
And in Kenya’s aquaculture sector, AquaRech is deploying IoT devices to track water quality and feeding patterns in fish farms. Combined with a digital platform that connects farmers to feed suppliers and buyers, the model improves yields and incomes in a sector increasingly threatened by warming waters and erratic weather.
“These are not abstract ideas,” Eugene says. “They are real businesses solving real problems on the ground. That’s the kind of impact we want to catalyse.”
Beyond capital investment
More than capital, MVC supports its portfolio companies in many ways. One of MCV’s distinctive features is its Venture Lab, a platform for testing frontier ideas that may be too early even for venture funding. Through small grants and pilot support, the lab has explored everything from blockchain-enabled disaster response to AI-driven water security.
“These tend to be really early stage,” Eugene says. “Some are pre-MVP, testing their hypotheses and looking for evidence that their ideas can actually work in the real world.”
The Venture Lab runs open calls for applications around specific themes. Past calls have focused on areas like the intersection of AI and climate resilience, water security, and even the potential of blockchain, Web3, and crypto to drive social impact. Each call attracts hundreds of applications from across the globe - often more than 500 - with Africa, and Kenya in particular, contributing a strong share of ideas. From this pool, just one or two winners are chosen.
“Our engagement with them usually lasts six to twelve months,” Eugene explains. “We provide non-dilutive capital - grants that allow them to pilot and test their hypothesis - but just as importantly, we also provide advisory support.”
On the investment side, MCV takes a more hands-on role with its portfolio companies. Advisory services are tailored to the gaps identified during due diligence, whether that means strategic guidance, operational strengthening, or discounted access to essential tools like Slack and other software.
Governance is another layer of support. “Typically, we come in as a board observer,” Eugene says. “That allows us to stay close to the strategy and the direction of the company, while also being in a position to provide introductions and connections that matter.”
Perhaps most crucially, MCV helps startups prepare for the future by opening doors to follow-on funding. “We want to make sure our companies don’t just survive but continue their growth trajectory,” Eugene says. “That means connecting them with the right investors at the right time and ensuring they can raise subsequent funding rounds.”
The funding gap for social impact startups in Africa
For many social impact startups in Africa, access to the right kind of funding at the right stage remains a formidable hurdle. While early-stage founders often manage to secure grant capital, moving beyond it is far from easy.
“Startups sometimes find it difficult to transition from non-dilutive funding to attracting impact investors or commercial capital,” Eugene explains. “If you’ve relied on grants for too long, you risk building a business model that isn’t financially sustainable, and that makes it harder to bring in more commercial or even concessionary capital.”
The challenge is compounded by the time it takes to develop innovations in areas like AgTech. Founders may spend years gathering data before they can build usable solutions. “There’s often no open-source digital public infrastructure to build from. If such protocols existed, startups could reduce lead times and focus on creating competitive products around user experience instead of just data collection,” he says.
Working capital is another pressing pain point, particularly for agricultural startups. Even when their needs are relatively modest - say $500,000 or less -raising that capital can be nearly impossible. “And when you do find it, the requirements are often so collateral-heavy that early-stage founders just can’t meet them,” Eugene adds.
Mercy Corps Ventures has tried to plug these gaps with a combination of patient capital and hands-on support. Through its evergreen Fund I, operational since 2015, the fund provides long-term investment alongside portfolio support services aimed at de-risking startups. Its Venture Lab also plays a key role in testing frontier technologies.
“We take bets on really nascent innovations like stablecoins or blockchain for impact,” Eugene says. “By providing grants and helping build an evidence base, we make it easier for these startups to later attract commercial capital.”
Looking ahead: Fund II
Now, MCV is preparing to scale its work with a new $50 million fund, its second since inception. The vehicle will not only allow it to back more startups at pre-seed and seed but also to follow on into Series A, helping successful companies scale across the continent.
It’s a blended capital vehicle aimed at backing more than 30 pre-seed and seed-stage startups across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Building on the success of its Fund I, Fund II has zeroed in on three priority areas - climate-smart technologies, inclusive climate fintech, and adaptive agriculture & food systems - with the goal of reaching over 25 million people with resilience-building solutions and catalyzing $500 million in follow-on capital.
“Our first fund proved the model,” Eugene says. “We’ve shown that it’s possible to invest early, drive impact, and crowd in other capital. Fund II is about doing it at scale.”
Mercy Corps Ventures is staking its future on a simple but profound belief: that Africa’s entrepreneurs, given the right support, can build the resilience the continent urgently needs. And perhaps, in their hands, the story of climate change in Africa can be rewritten - from one of vulnerability to one of strength.