Tembea spinoff
Innovation and Acceleration Hub
VillageCAN: empowering women and youth to lead climate action and food systems transformation.
VillageCAN, Village Climate Actors Network
Empowering women and youth to take urgent action in food systems transformation and climate innovation
VillageCAN is a flagship initiative of Tembea Futures Institute (TeFI), a social enterprise advancing climate-smart interventions and sustainable land-use practices across rural Kenya and beyond.
The model helps villages own-source climate financing and invest in local resilience through youth-led, data-driven, and financially sustainable community systems.
The challenge
Villages are on the frontline of the climate crisis
Villages face floods, droughts, and disease outbreaks with limited access to finance or decision-making power.
Governments in the Global South often operate within informal economies, leaving a climate finance gap that deepens food insecurity and vulnerability.
Our solution
Five innovation pathways
Through VillageCAN, TeFI enables villages, women, and youth to take charge of climate action.
Student Apprentice Hub (SAH)
A university-led smart extension model that trains and deploys students as climate-service apprentices. Currently active at JOOUST in Siaya County, where 700 students serve 25 village climate investment groups.
Loyalty-as-a-Service (LaaS)
The Uhai App mobile wallet channels self-retail loyalty savings from households and students into climate investments. Each county cluster of 2,500 villages can raise up to $15 million a year.
Village Climate Investment Groups
Cooperatives of 100 households raising $6,000 a year to fund hospital insurance and health systems, climate and social enterprises, smart extension, and food forest academies.
Climate Impact Bonds (CIBs)
Public-private partnerships that finance proven, outcome-based climate investments, such as waste-to-energy systems for Bondo and Ugunja municipalities.
Climate Community Foundation
A community climate endowment that harnesses 22% of loyalty funds from local kiosks and eateries to provide grants for village climate projects.
How it works
An ecosystem of financial autonomy
Through digital loyalty systems, local smart kiosks, and village investment groups, VillageCAN creates an ecosystem of financial autonomy and collective climate ownership.
Every loyalty slip, transaction, or skill gained by an apprentice contributes to a growing network of self-financed climate actions across Kenya's rural landscape.
Impact vision
By 2030, sustainable data-driven rural economies
2,500
Villages per county
625,000
Youth and women trained
$15M
Annual own-source financing
The Tembea family
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