Komaza, an innovative smallholder forestry platform that offers scalable and sustainable nature-based solutions to climate change, has received renewed support from Mirova, a Natixis Investment Managers subsidiary that is 100% dedicated to sustainable investing. Komaza will be able to expand operations in Kenya thanks to the $US 9.5 million investment.
For the past 15 years, Komaza has been building its smallholder forestry programme. Since the program’s beginning, Komaza has worked with 25,000 farmers to plant 8,000,000 trees, increasing Kenya’s total tree cover by 9,500 ha.
The Komaza strategy entails working together with a sizable network of smallholder farmers to plant trees on lands that have been degraded in coastal Kenya. As part of the relationship, Komaza offers top-notch seedlings, forestry know-how, farmer training programmes, and access to the wood market, ensuring that partner farmers receive cash payments. In exchange, farmers give Komaza a portion of their unused land and labour to prepare the soil for planting trees and to care for the trees up until harvest, which is done by Komaza’s skilled workers. Komaza is creating a tech platform to manage its entire value chain activities in order to scale up this innovative model and manage the operational complexity.
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Late in 2019, Komaza expanded into central Kenya, where the firm noticed a significant interest in the programme from nearby farmers.
The new funding from Mirova’s sustainable land-use strategy aims to fill the structural wood deficit in the country while producing beneficial environmental and social effects: prevent land degradation over 25,000 ha by planting new trees; give 60,000 smallholder farmers an additional source of income; sequester 2 million tonnes of carbon.
“We are excited to accelerate scaling our sustainable smallholder forestry and innovative platform to combat the climate crisis with continued support from Mirova. As our first senior loan, this investment is a critical financing milestone for Komaza in diversifying the source of financing and strengthening the capital structure,” MASASHI MOTOHASHI, Corporate Finance Manager at Komaza, said.
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“Following our first investment in July 2020, we are very proud to renew our support to the development of Komaza. Their unique microforestry model brings reforestation and carbon sequestration at scale while improving the livelihoods of tens of thousands of smallholder farmers,” JOHANN FOURGEAUD, Investment Director at Mirova, said.
Komaza forestry platform Komaza forestry platform
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
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