Financing clean energy for growth: transforming businesses in Kakuma

By mid-morning in Kakuma, the heat is already pressing in. In the Ethiopian Market, shop owners wipe sweat from their brows as customers drift between stalls, scanning for cold drinks and fresh food, small comforts that depend on reliable access to power.

Across Turkana County, particularly in Kakuma Refugee Camp and its surrounding host communities, access to reliable energy remains uneven. Many small businesses still rely on costly, polluting alternatives that eat into already thin profit margins and limit their ability to grow. Clean energy technologies for productive use, such as efficient cookstoves and solar freezers, are increasingly visible in the market. Yet for many low-income entrepreneurs, affordability remains the deciding factor.

Through EnDev’s Humanitarian Market-Based Energy Access (MBEA) project, this affordability gap is being addressed by working with existing financial intermediaries, including community-based lenders and commercial banks, to shape financing options around how informal businesses actually function.

Early on, a practical mismatch surfaced. Lenders, energy suppliers, savings groups and end users each played essential roles, yet often worked in parallel, with limited understanding of one another’s constraints or processes. Access-to-finance matchmaking events created space for these conversations, linking financial institutions with energy suppliers and connecting both more closely with end-users through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs).

One visible outcome of this approach is the partnership between Kenya Bankers Sacco (KBS) and Access and Move. What began as a series of conversations during the 2024 matchmaking sessions has gradually grown into a structured collaboration that connects credit directly with clean energy product delivery.

Kenya Bankers Sacco now provides guarantor-based loans to small business owners from both refugee and host communities, many without formal credit histories or collateral. Loan terms are shaped around the daily cash flows of informal enterprises, making repayment more manageable and reducing financial strain.

On the supply side, Access and Move distributes solar-powered appliances, including freezers that are essential for off-grid retailers and food vendors. Training and after-sales support are part of the offer, helping ensure the technologies remain usable over time.

“The financing link has shifted how we work,” says Simon, Regional Sales Manager at Access and Move. “Instead of relying only on cash purchases, people can now pay in instalments. It allows us to reach more customers, and it allows businesses to plan.”

Alongside formal finance, community savings structures play a quiet but central role. Many people in Kakuma rely on VSLAs to pool small weekly contributions and access short-term loans for emergencies and household needs. These informal systems are vital, but they can also limit savings growth and leave pooled funds exposed to risk.

Through training and linkages with formal financial institutions such as Kenya Bankers Sacco and Equity Bank, VSLA groups are learning how to open and manage group accounts, strengthen governance and invest more deliberately in productive assets.

“Formalising savings groups allows them to move beyond urgent needs and into longer-term planning,” explains Wanja. “Groups are learning how to secure their capital and how to think differently about what collective investment can look like.”

That shift is already opening new possibilities. Some VSLAs are now pooling resources to venture into group businesses, including stocking energy-efficient stoves produced locally by manufacturers such as Sunken, Shaju and Green at Mind.

The most immediate changes are visible in small shops across Kakuma.

At his stall in Kakuma Village One’s Ethiopian Market, Mapendo Jackson gestures toward his solar freezer with quiet pride. Before acquiring it through the KBS and Access and Move partnership, he could only sell warm sodas, which was hardly appealing when temperatures regularly climb above 40°C.

“I used to sell warm drinks, and business was slow,” he says. “Now customers come back again and again for cold ones.”

In Kakuma Village Three, Masika tells a similar story. Her shop now supplies chilled drinks at prices as low as ten shillings, something she could not manage before installing a solar freezer.

“Before, it was a struggle to keep drinks cool during the day,” she explains. “Now the freezer works all day, and customers can afford cold drinks.”

Beyond income, there is also a quieter sense of social value in her role.

By bringing together financial institutions, clean energy suppliers and community savings groups, a local financing ecosystem is beginning to take shape. Access to tailored credit, alongside growing financial literacy, is enabling small businesses to invest, expand and gradually reduce dependence on expensive, polluting energy sources.

The change is not only economic. Savings groups are building stronger capital bases. Retailers are planning ahead rather than operating day to day. Relationships between banks, suppliers and informal entrepreneurs are becoming steadier and more predictable.

What is emerging through EnDev’s consumer energy finance work is not a single breakthrough, but a series of quiet, connected shifts in how people save, how businesses invest and how clean energy becomes part of everyday commerce in places like Kakuma and Kalobeyei. The full shape of that change is still unfolding.