Elite founders and invisible markets: Lessons from our inaugural eco pilot fund journey in African eco-dynamism

Shell Foundation is pleased to share insights from EchoVC’s inaugural Eco Pilot Fund, launched in partnership with UKaid via our Transforming Energy Access programme.

The Fund set out with a simple but ambitious goal: back elite African founders tackling climate and climate-adjacent challenges with bold, early-stage solutions that lift incomes cutting emissions and transform underserved markets – concentrating on SF’s three core focus groups: smallholder farmers, urban transporters and micro-entrepreneurs.

By deploying $2.75m across 15 pioneering companies, the initiative has highlighted both the scale of opportunity and the structural barriers in Africa’s climate tech sectors, including four persistent gaps:

• Pipeline Gap: Founders face long R&D cycles and policy hurdles, especially women-led and science-based teams.
• Funding Gap: Early-stage capital is often too small, rigid, or delayed.
• Gender Gap: Male-only teams receive 85% of funding, while women-only teams less than 1%.
• Market Paradox Gap: Service innovation outpaces infrastructure, creating iceberg-like markets—unseen but full of potential.

Shell Foundation’s investment helped leverage 1-3 times additional capital into these portfolio companies, enabling them to grow faster and reach more customers.

EchoVC shares in this blog how they worked to overcome these gaps, including achieving a 50% female (co)founded portfolio and focusing on catalytic capital to help transition pilots to scalable businesses, particularly for women-led, science heavy ventures.