CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH – MoonShot by TechCabal

Maelis Carraro

Founder and General Partner, Catalyst Fund

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Maelis Carraro is the Founder and General Partner of Catalyst Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in climate tech companies across Africa.
A venture investor and former technology founder, Maelis has nearly two decades of experience investing in and building businesses across emerging markets. She has managed more than $60 million across accelerators and funds, invested in and supported over 80 startups, and helped mobilize more than $800 million into emerging-market startup ecosystems.

Her investment experience spans climate fintech, agriculture and food systems, energy, mobility, waste and circular economy, and other technologies addressing climate resilience and adaptation. She combines early-stage investing with hands-on experience supporting founders as they scale across African and other emerging markets.

Prior to founding Catalyst Fund, Maelis worked across investing and climate finance at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), OECD, Grameen Bank, and Global Partnerships. She was also a founder herself, co-founding RemitMas, a fintech company focused on helping migrant communities convert remittances into long-term savings and financial resilience.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Maelis Carraro

Founder and General Partner, Catalyst Fund
Lolade Awogbade

Green Growth Advisor, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Lolade Awogbade is a senior climate finance and green growth expert and currently serves as Green Growth Adviser at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). She brings over 17 years of multinational experience spanning climate finance, green growth policy, sustainable investment, Net Zero, and ESG strategy.

Previously, she led Sustainability at the Development Bank of Nigeria and held strategic and leadership roles at Accenture, Chams Plc, and Union Bank. Her experience spans policy, standards, development finance, commercial banking, and transaction-level delivery. She is a 2026 Yale Climate Fellow, a member of Sustainability Professionals of Nigeria, and co-author of Management and Leadership for a Successful Africa Vol. 2.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Lolade Awogbade

Green Growth Advisor, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
Maxime Bayen

Partner, Catalyst Fund

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Maxime Bayen is a Partner at Catalyst Fund, Africa’s leading early-stage VC fund and accelerator backing mission-driven founders building climate resilience solutions across Africa. He also co-founded Africa: The Big Deal, the leading database and insights platform on startup funding across the continent.

LinkedIn

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Maxime Bayen

Partner, Catalyst Fund
Kola Masha

Managing Director and Co-founder of Babban Gona

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Kola Masha is Managing Director and Co-founder of Babban Gona, an agricultural technology and impact company using finance, data, and technology to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers across Africa. Under his leadership, Babban Gona has served more than 500,000 smallholder farmers and developed an Agri-Finance as a Service (AFaaS) platform that combines AI, biometrics, credit scoring, enterprise resource planning, and predictive analytics to expand access to agricultural finance.

An engineer by training, Kola began his career at 3M and General Electric before serving as CEO of a subsidiary of the Notore Group, where he led commercial strategy across West and Central Africa. He has also served as Senior Advisor to Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and was the first leader of a for-profit social enterprise to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. He holds degrees from MIT and Harvard.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Kola Masha

Senior Reporter, Bloomberg News
Kelvin Muriuki

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Taka Earth

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Kelvin Muriuki is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Taka Earth, a climate technology enterprise developing intelligent waste management infrastructure and advanced data analytics systems across East Africa. Under his strategic leadership, Taka Earth designs and deploys AI-enabled smart bin networks that monitor waste streams in real time. These solutions deliver critical circular economy analytics, verified ESG reporting, and comprehensive resource traceability to enterprise clients, educational institutions, and industrial partners.

Operating at the intersection of hardware engineering, climate innovation, and digital transparency, Kelvin focuses on transitioning urban and industrial waste operations from reactive logistics to data-driven resource recovery networks. His initiatives enable corporate brands and facility managers to fulfill statutory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mandates, derive actionable consumer insights from waste patterns, and achieve measurable carbon reductions.

Kelvin brings over 15 years of technology and data leadership experience to his role. Prior to founding Taka Earth in 2022, he held key positions at prominent technology and media organizations, including Cellulant, Mdundo, Radio Africa Group, and Africori.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Kelvin Muriuki

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Taka Earth
Ayo Arikawe

Co-Founder, ThriveAgric

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Ayo Arikawe is the Co-Founder of ThriveAgric, an agricultural technology company that is passionate about ensuring food security and productivity in Africa by empowering smallholder farmers through its flagship proprietary product: Agricultural Operating System (AOS).

To date, ThriveAgric has partnered with several organizations to unlock over $200m in financing for farmers, working with over 1 million farmers across 5 African countries.

Ayo serves as a mentor to Google Launchpad, was a top 10 African Business Hero by the African Business Heroes, and was the winner of the 2022 Visa Everywhere Initiative. He’s also a venture partner at Velocity Digital and Kaleo, two early-stage investment firms that have backed over 100 companies, including companies like Terra Industries and Chowdeck.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Ayo Arikawe

Co-Founder, ThriveAgric
Oluwakemi Olajide

Principal, Africa Climate Ventures (ACV)

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Oluwakemi Olajide is a Principal at Africa Climate Ventures (ACV), where she leads fundraising, investment strategy, and portfolio value creation for ventures accelerating Africa’s green transition. With more than a decade of experience across private equity, venture capital, and banking, she has deployed nearly $100 million in catalytic capital to businesses driving climate resilience, financial inclusion, and sustainable development.

Prior to ACV, Oluwakemi led investments for the uMunthu Funds at Alitheia Capital, backing inclusive, technology-enabled businesses while championing gender-smart investing. She has served on the boards of companies across agriculture, logistics, fintech, and energy, and is recognised for her expertise in climate finance, impact investing, and venture growth.

A World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Oluwakemi is committed to leveraging finance as a catalyst for inclusive economic growth and Africa’s sustainable future.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Oluwakemi Olajide

Principal, Africa Climate Ventures (ACV)
Seyi Oguntunde

CEO and Co-founder, SWAP

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Seyi Oguntunde is the Co-founder and CEO of Swap Energies, an emerging African electric mobility company building battery-swapping infrastructure for two-, three-, and four-wheel electric vehicles.

As CEO, Seyi leads the company’s strategy, fundraising, investor relations, and policy engagement, working across the public and private sectors to accelerate the adoption of clean mobility. His work focuses on developing the infrastructure and partnerships needed to make electric transportation more accessible, scalable, and sustainable across Nigeria and Africa.

linkedin.com/in/gbagboola

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Seyi Oguntunde

CEO and Co-founder, SWAP
Olufunto Boroffice

CEO, Chanja Datti

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Funto Boroffice is the founder/CEO of award winning Chanja Datti Ltd, a waste collection & recycling social enterprise dedicated to transforming the waste in her environment to value and creating jobs and positioned to solve the growing plastic waste and unemployment crisis in Africa. Chanja Datti’s 4-pronged sustainability model focuses on waste management solutions that reduce CO2 emissions, creation of economic opportunities through the circularity of plastics, engaging on principles of circular economy, and economic empowerment of women and youths via job creation. She started her career in the US, where she spent 17 years gaining global experience, 12 of which were with GE as an executive. In the last 10 years, her organization has successfully diverted almost 14,000tons from uncontrolled landfill and empowered 2,500+ women and at-risk youth. Her organization currently has 95 FT and 120 PT employees.

She is a founding member, former National VP and current BoT member of the Recycling Association of Nigeria (RAN), founder of Initiative for the Advancement of Waste Management in Africa (aka W.A.S.T.E Africa), a Fellow of the Waste Management Society of Nigeria, Institute of Environmental Practitioners of Nigeria (FIEPN) and Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC) and member of the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) and Lifetime member of WIMBIZ. She is an alumnus of the several prestigious local and international programs and sits on several other boards including advisory board member for the Waste Pickers Association of Nigeria (WAPAN). She is a proud 2024 Alumni of the MIT Foundry and Stanford Seed Fellowship.

linkedin.com/in/gbagboola

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Olufunto Boroffice

CEO, Chanja Datti
Sophie Mbugua

Founder, Africa Climate Conversations

CLEAN/CLIMATE TECH

Sophie Mbugua is a Nairobi-based environmental journalist and media consultant, and the founder of Africa Climate Conversations. The media platform tells climate and environmental stories from an African perspective through a podcast, a YouTube channel and written features. She produces and presents the Africa Climate Conversations podcast, which pairs in-depth expert interviews with human-interest reporting from the field. She founded the platform to close the gap in African climate narratives, which she saw were too often shaped from outside the continent.

Her reporting on climate change, energy, agriculture and the environment across sub-Saharan Africa has been published by the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Mongabay, The New Humanitarian, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Mail & Guardian, Radio France Internationale and the Nation Media Group, among others. As a climate communications consultant, she has worked on media relations at UN climate summits and coordinated press relations for the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change.

She is a former fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Future Climate for Africa reporting programme, and holds a degree in Communication.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemi-olajide-49907432/

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Sophie Mbugua

Founder, Africa Climate Conversations