New initiative connects women-owned and women-led energy businesses to a curated network of financiers, funders and investors, coordinated through KD Strategies.

Johannesburg, We'RE Connected, the network for women and underrepresented professionals across Africa's energy sector, today announced the launch of Access to Capital for Women across the Energy Value Chain, an initiative designed to close one of the most persistent barriers facing women-owned and women-led businesses in energy: access to the right funding, from the right partner, at the right stage of growth.

South Africa's renewable energy sector has moved from policy ambition to real capacity. Since the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme launched in 2011, the country has attracted more than R292 billion in renewable energy investment and added over 9.6 GW of generation capacity, according to BDO South Africa's 2025 Renewables Report. Private producers alone added 4,100 MW of new capacity in the first half of 2025, up 208 percent year on year, per data from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa. Government and industry frameworks estimate a further R1.5 trillion in investment will be needed by 2030 to sustain this growth.

That scale of capital movement is exactly why who gets access to it matters. Globally, female-only founding teams received just 2.3 percent of the 289 billion US dollars invested through venture capital in 2024, a share that has barely moved in three decades, according to the Women in VC and Startup Funding 2025 report. In the energy sector specifically, women hold only 18 percent of leadership roles worldwide, up from 13 percent in 2015 but still well below the 25 percent economy-wide average, according to the International Energy Agency. Across Africa, women-owned and women-led SMEs face an estimated 42 billion US dollar financing gap, according to the African Development Bank's Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative. In South Africa alone, the SME Finance Forum puts that gap at 5 billion US dollars, driven in large part by women entrepreneurs being systematically perceived as higher risk by financial institutions, regardless of the performance of their businesses. Left unaddressed, South Africa's energy growth risks reproducing the same exclusion at a larger scale. We'RE Connected exists to interrupt that pattern.

Access to Capital addresses this gap directly. Enquiries are handled through KD Strategies, which manages prequalification and initial assessment for every applicant, before carefully transitioning qualifying businesses to a curated network of financiers, funders and investors matched to their size and funding need. The offer is structured across three tiers, from emerging enterprises seeking working capital or contract funding, through growing SMEs seeking growth and term finance, to established corporates and asset owners seeking structured finance, equity or blended debt-equity solutions.

“The energy sector will not become representative and diverse without deliberate work to make it so,” says Kalnisha Singh, Founder and Director of KD Strategies and coordinator of We'RE Connected. “We have spent the last four years building relationships with the financiers, funders and investors who understand this sector and are willing to back the women in it. Access to Capital exists to put that network to work, so that funding stops being the barrier that keeps women out of the value chain they are already part of.”

Every enquiry is handled directly through KD Strategies and kept confidential. There is no cost to apply, and applicants typically receive feedback within a week of submitting a complete application. Submitting an application does not guarantee funding.

Businesses across the energy value chain, including generation, manufacturing and local content, transmission and distribution, storage and grid services, residential and off-grid solutions, e-mobility, and downstream services such as water and sanitation infrastructure, are invited to apply.