Two Egyptian partners with extensive experience as angel investors have launched a venture capital fund targeting pre-seeded startups, primarily from the Middle East and Africa, that develop nature-positive and sustainable solutions to address climate change. The Climate Resilience Fund (CRF) intends to have a strong presence in Egypt and is particularly interested in addressing problems related to land and sea misuse.

Land use plays a key role in greenhouse gas cycles, as its activities can either contribute to emitting them into the atmosphere or help remove them. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that agriculture, forestry and other land uses account for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions originating in human activity. And in this context, both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement acknowledge the importance of land use in climate change mitigation.

The launch of the fund also comes as Egypt approaches the start of the next climate summit, COP27, which will take place in Sharm El-Sheikh in November. “There is a momentum now in climate change. And it’s very much present here because of COP27, but it’s also present worldwide because of the changing weather patterns and the impact it is having,” Hossam Allam, one of the CRF’s partners, told Al-Monitor.

Allam said the new fund aims to invest $25 million over the next two years, half of it in Egypt and the other half mainly in the Middle East and Africa. Given the interest shown by investors and startups from Europe and North America, however, he stated that they are considering dedicating a tranche to the rest of the world as long as they maintain a vision from or for Africa. He also said that for the moment they have only taken small positions in some projects and expect to start announcing investments in early 2023.