Africa’s agricultural SMEs and smallholder farmers face an estimated $117 billion financing need, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC). At the same time, climate financing in Africa is expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2030, showing the scale of capital needed to expand businesses and projects tied to agriculture and the continent’s climate transition.
Yet the financing available to many of these businesses remains below what they need to grow. Smaller companies can have customers, purchase orders and future revenue but still struggle to access working capital because conventional lenders often rely on collateral and established financial records when assessing borrowers.
Melanin Kapital is building its business around this problem. Founded in Nairobi in 2020, the fintech provides financing to businesses across Africa’s agricultural and climate-related value chains, using invoices, purchase orders and carbon offtake agreements as the basis for different forms of working capital.
Its approach puts the company at the intersection of two major needs in Africa: giving smaller businesses better access to capital and directing more financing towards sectors that are expected to play a major role in the continent’s transition to a lower-carbon economy.
How Melanin Kapital started
Melanin Kapital was founded by Mélanie Keïta and Ian Minjire Kibira. The company initially set out to connect African social-impact businesses with international capital, drawing on the founders’ experience in investment, development and sustainability.
Keïta has a background in investment and impact finance, while Kibira has worked in engineering and sustainability. In an account of the company’s early development, Keïta said the founders were motivated by seeing African entrepreneurs struggle to access financing despite the availability of capital internationally.
The first version of Melanin Kapital was therefore broader than the financing platform it operates today. Keïta said the company spent its first year bootstrapping as a financial advisory firm before developing a technology team and launching a minimum viable product with Absa Bank Kenya.
That early experience helped shape the company’s eventual direction. Rather than trying to solve every financing problem for every African business, Melanin Kapital gradually narrowed its focus towards SMEs operating in agriculture, climate technology and other parts of the green economy.
Why the focus moved to green finance
The change made sense because many businesses working in climate and agriculture face a particular financing problem. They often need money to purchase equipment, fulfil orders or continue operating before their customers pay them, but their businesses may not have the traditional assets that banks usually want to see.
Melanin Kapital’s current model is designed around the cash already moving through those businesses. Instead of asking only what assets a company owns, the platform looks at transactions such as unpaid invoices, confirmed purchase orders and, for some businesses, future income tied to carbon-credit sales.
This puts working capital at the centre of the business. The objective is not simply to provide long-term investment but to help businesses bridge the period between spending money to deliver a product or service and receiving payment from the customer.
The model is particularly relevant in agriculture, where businesses can have long payment cycles and seasonal operations. It also applies to companies selling solar equipment, running cold-chain infrastructure, developing carbon projects or producing sustainable inputs.
Financing invoices before they are paid
One of Melanin Kapital’s main products is receivables financing, also known as invoice discounting.
The idea is relatively simple. A business that has already delivered a product or service may issue an invoice to its customer and then have to wait weeks or months before receiving payment. Instead of waiting, the business can use that invoice to access part of the money earlier.
Melanin Kapital says its invoice-financing product can provide up to 90% of the value of an unpaid invoice, with financing facilities ranging from $5,000 to $250,000.
The structure allows a business to unlock working capital without taking a conventional loan against property or other fixed assets. Once the underlying customer pays the invoice, the financing can be settled according to the agreed terms.
The model still requires careful assessment. The lender needs to establish that the invoice is genuine, that the customer is capable of paying and that the underlying transaction is sound. But the source of repayment is linked to an actual business transaction rather than simply the borrower’s balance sheet.
Helping businesses fulfil new orders
Melanin Kapital also provides purchase-order financing for businesses that have secured orders but need money to fulfil them.
This addresses a different stage of the working-capital cycle. A company may have won a contract from a credible buyer but lack enough cash to purchase inventory, raw materials or other inputs needed to complete the order.
Melanin Kapital says its purchase-order financing facilities range from $5,000 to $250,000 and are available against verified purchase orders.
For smaller businesses, this can be important because winning a large contract does not automatically mean having the cash required to execute it. Without working capital, a company can be forced to reject an order or delay delivery even when there is clear demand for what it sells.
By financing against the confirmed order, Melanin Kapital is effectively helping businesses turn future revenue into working capital before the customer makes the final payment.
Financing carbon projects
Carbon finance is another part of Melanin Kapital’s model.
The company offers financing against signed carbon offtake agreements, where a buyer has committed to purchasing carbon credits generated by a project. Melanin Kapital says these facilities range from $100,000 to $1 million.
This addresses a timing problem within the carbon market. Developing a carbon project can require significant spending before credits are issued and sold, leaving project developers looking for capital to cover expenses during that period.
Melanin Kapital’s model attempts to use the future carbon transaction as part of the financing structure. The company has also previously been associated with technology designed to track carbon savings and carbon-related data, including the use of blockchain and artificial intelligence.
However, blockchain is not the main story of its current business. Its present offering is more clearly centred on digital financing, particularly working capital for agricultural and climate-focused businesses.
Who Melanin Kapital finances
Melanin Kapital is not positioning itself as a general-purpose lender for every African SME.
Its current platform identifies four broad categories of businesses: CleanTech companies, green manufacturers, digital platforms and carbon developers. These include businesses working in solar, irrigation, cold-chain infrastructure, mobility, circular economy, sustainable inputs, processing and carbon projects.
Digital businesses can also qualify when they operate as aggregators, marketplaces or platforms with embedded financing. The common factor is that these businesses operate within sectors connected to agriculture, climate technology or the wider green economy.
This focus gives Melanin Kapital a more specific lending strategy. It is not simply looking for businesses that need money; it is targeting companies where financing can support commercial activity while contributing to sectors with wider environmental or agricultural relevance.
The scale of its current business
Melanin Kapital has disbursed $1.5 million in green financing, financed more than 20 green SMEs and financed more than 400,000 smallholder farmers. These figures appear on the company’s current platform and should be understood as company-reported figures rather than independently audited performance data.
The year 2025 was an important year for its financing model. In its year-in-review, Melanin Kapital reported that it deployed $1.5 million across seven African countries over 18 months and kept non-performing loans below 3%. Again, these are figures reported by the company.
Demand for its receivables-financing product grew quickly after it launched, particularly among climate- and agriculture-focused SMEs that needed short-term working capital rather than another round of venture capital. It reported financing 20 businesses during 2025 and said half of them reached break-even within months of receiving financing.
Those claims are significant if they hold up under independent scrutiny, because they point to a different way of measuring the value of SME financing. Instead of focusing only on how much capital was deployed, the more important question is whether that capital helped businesses become more stable and commercially sustainable.
Building a financing platform around cash flow
Melanin Kapital’s model is based on the idea that future cash flow can be useful when assessing a business’s ability to repay financing.
That is different from the approach many traditional lenders take. A company may be generating revenue and working with credible customers but still fail to qualify for sufficient financing because it does not own property or other assets that can be pledged as collateral.
Cash-flow-based financing does not mean collateral and risk disappear. Instead, it changes what the lender is primarily evaluating: the quality of the transaction, the reliability of the buyer, the company’s financial records and the likelihood that the expected cash flow will arrive.
For African SMEs, that distinction can matter. A growing business may have more value in its contracts and customer relationships than in the physical assets sitting on its balance sheet.
The role of technology
Technology is important to Melanin Kapital because its financing model depends on assessing businesses and transactions digitally.
The company describes its platform as a neobank and allows businesses to apply for financing through its digital platform. Its current offering is built around different financing products rather than a single loan product, allowing the company to match financing to the type of transaction a business is trying to fund.
This also reflects the broader evolution of the company. Melanin Kapital started as an advisory and investment platform before moving towards technology-enabled financing. Its own account of the journey describes several years of testing and iteration before it found stronger demand for receivables financing among climate and agriculture businesses.
That evolution is important because it shows that the company did not arrive at its current model fully formed. It tested different approaches before concentrating on a specific financing need.
Partnerships have helped shape the model
Melanin Kapital has received support from several organisations during its development.
Dealroom records a 2022 Techstars investment and identifies Melanin Kapital as a Nairobi-based company launched in 2020. Other databases and company announcements also link the business to Adaverse, DEG and Ecobank through investments, grants and programmes.
The company also reported partnerships with the African Guarantee Fund and Ecobank around financing for gender-inclusive businesses in the green economy. It said GIZ supported the setup and launch of its financing programme.
These partnerships matter because financing SMEs at scale often requires more than a digital lending platform. Guarantees, concessional capital, institutional partnerships and risk-sharing mechanisms can make it easier for financial companies to lend to businesses that conventional lenders might consider too risky.
The challenge of lending to smaller businesses
The businesses it finances can operate in sectors exposed to unpredictable conditions. Agriculture is affected by weather, commodity prices, logistics and seasonal cycles, while climate technology companies can face long sales cycles and high upfront equipment costs.
Invoice financing also depends heavily on the buyer paying on time. If a customer delays payment, disputes an invoice or becomes unable to pay, the financing structure can come under pressure.
Carbon finance presents its own challenges. Carbon projects can take years to develop, and securing credible buyers for future credits is not always easy. Melanin Kapital itself acknowledged these challenges in its 2025 review, noting the difficulties around agricultural payment cycles and carbon offtakes.
The company’s ability to manage these risks will therefore be just as important as its ability to attract more borrowers.
The model’s Importance
The IFC’s estimate of a $117 billion financing need for African agricultural SMEs and smallholder farmers shows that conventional financing is not meeting the needs of a major part of the agricultural economy. At the same time, the IFC expects climate-smart financing demand in Africa to reach $1.1 trillion by 2030.
Those numbers do not mean that Melanin Kapital can solve the problem on its own. Its current financing volume is still small relative to the scale of the capital required across the continent.
What the company is attempting to demonstrate is that specialised financing products can make it easier for smaller businesses to access capital based on the commercial activity already taking place inside their businesses.
That could become increasingly important as African economies invest more heavily in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, electric mobility, waste management and other climate-related sectors.
What comes next for Melanin Kapital
In its 2025 review, the company said it had secured commitments to increase its financing capacity to $5 million and planned to finance more than 100 climate and agricultural innovations in 2026. These are targets stated by the company, rather than results that have already been independently verified.
The company is also exploring new markets and value chains. Its chairman, Ian Minjire, said the business was looking at expansion into areas including dairy and Ethiopia while strengthening its risk frameworks, climate-data systems and digital measurement, reporting and verification tools.
Scaling the model will require discipline. Melanin Kapital will need to maintain credit quality as its financing book grows, build reliable partnerships with buyers and financial institutions, and prove that financing green SMEs can generate sustainable returns while delivering the impact its model promises.
Melanin Kapital’s place in Africa’s green economy
Melanin Kapital is operating in a market where two problems are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: African SMEs need more working capital, and the continent needs more private financing for climate-related businesses.
Its response is to connect those problems through financing products built around actual business transactions. Instead of relying only on traditional collateral, it looks at invoices, purchase orders and carbon offtake agreements as potential sources of repayment.
The company is still relatively small compared with the scale of Africa’s financing needs. But its evolution from an impact-investment advisory platform into a specialised digital financing business shows how fintech companies can adapt when they identify a specific financing problem that traditional institutions are not adequately addressing.
For Melanin Kapital, the next stage will be about proving that this model can work at a much larger scale. If it can grow its financing book while maintaining strong credit discipline, it could become a meaningful source of working capital for the businesses building Africa’s agricultural and climate economy.