At GCIC we get to know men and women whose minds, ideas and green business ethos shape their unique climate friendly business models. In the Women Entrepreneurs Transformation Programme (WETP) workshops, topics recurring frequently include navigating tradition and culture, barriers to finance, gaining self-confidence and work-life balance and these sessions provide support and opportunities for experience sharing. So, with solid support initiatives already in place, are there additional ways that could be found to meet the needs of climate entrepreneurs, and in particular women? Difficulty of access to finance is the most cited challenge and therefore an appropriate place to look for new solutions.

Empowered women empower others and research has found that women entrepreneurs’ self-actualisation, or self-fulfilment, includes both succeeding in business and enabling the success of others. Women frequently seek to empower other women, who then go on to improve the lives of their families and communities, creating a ripple effect of benefit. In the case of women climate entrepreneurs, their success could be interpreted as:

• Thriving personally whilst creating and running a profitable business;
• Economically improving the lives of others including women; and
• Contributing to a healthier planet by working to reduce carbon emissions and engaging in sustainable business practices.

This last feature – contributing to a cleaner, healthier world, has the potential to unlock further financial benefit for all green entrepreneurs, but especially women.

Globally, the growth of green business is increasingly promoted and encouraged through carbon trading and green finance. Ghana is making important progress in this regard with the Ghana Carbon Market Framework and membership of groups like the World Bank Climate Market Club and the West African Alliance on Carbon Market and Climate Finance.

Greening processes including carbon sequestration, reducing carbon emissions, promoting cleaner energy, and engaging in sustainable business practices, are all core to our entrepreneurs’ models, and vital for sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

GCIC’s entrepreneurs are therefore endowed with an invaluable resource by virtue of their green businesses. Commodification of their greening effect could add immense value by earning revenue alongside other goods and services and making these businesses more attractive for investment.

Some of the ways in which business owners might benefit include:

• Attracting funders who pursue investments in sustainable businesses.
• Monetizing carbon credits by:
• trading them to entities wishing to offset their large carbon footprint; or
• Selling them on an international carbon emissions market.

This is already starting to happen in Ghana and in 2023 the country earned almost $5 million from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

Coming back to women entrepreneurs who run great businesses, empower and improve the lives of others, actively include other women in their networks, and operate green enterprises, a few things could happen:

• Like other high calibre climate entrepreneurs, they could attract funding from green investors.
• They could sell their reserve of carbon credits for money.
• Carbon credits could be used as a unit of exchange to buy needed resources and inputs.
• They could pass on sustainable practices to their business value chain participants, in particular women, who could in turn spread these practices to others, further broadening greening activities and their positive impact.
• Their economic empowerment of others could extend to becoming aggregators of carbon credits by buying them back from value chain participants and selling them on carbon markets.

Government’s pioneering work in facilitating carbon trade could be extended through innovative policies that enable SMEs to both buy and sell carbon credits and use it as an alternative currency. The result would be additional value for green business models, increased recognition for climate friendly enterprise, and more participants being attracted to the sector, resulting in its expansion. This would be good for the economy and the environment through job creation and more people working towards a cleaner world.

These ideas would benefit green entrepreneurs in general, but for women the implications would be even farther reaching. The problem of difficult access to finance for women would be partly solved by having a new tradeable commodity and currency. Further, more women could be employed and become employers in green value chains, all of whom would have increased disposable income that would contribute towards improving the lives of additional families and communities.