MESPT Cutting -edge Tactics To Advancing The Green Economy

One of the Micro Enterprises Support Programme Trust (MESPT) Pillars’ is Green Growth Development. It involves the promotion of resource efficient, clean and climate sensitive technologies and solutions for use in the agriculture value chain and at household levels. This is a strategic move to help Kenyans transit from a brown economy which exerts pressure on the existing natural resources, to a green economy.

The organization is implementing the DANIDA Country Programme dubbed the Green Growth and Employment Programme 2016-2020 which is aligned to various Kenyan green growth policies and laws such as the Green Economy and Implementation Strategy Plan (GESIP) for achieving sustainable development.

Some of the cutting edge approaches that MESPT has adopted to advance the realization of a green economy include:

Greening Value chains

The organization has been aggressive in spearheading natural resource management initiatives. This is in line with the Trust’s mission to support the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises by providing integrated business solutions for sustainable development. To enhance adoption of green technologies and solutions, MEST has invested in sensitization and awareness creation initiatives such as workshops, forums, conferences and exhibitions, Private Public Partnerships in counties and trainings.

For the last 5 years, over 20,000 households have been impacted through these initiatives that have led to installation of 300 biogas digesters, over 600 water based projects (drip kits, water pans, solar pumps, water weirs) and about 100 solar powered projects.

Green Technology Financing

The Green Financing fund is specially designed for Financial Institutions in Kenya. The essence of this is to help position these institutions to take a central role in mitigating affordability barrier and accelerate uptake of green technologies at household and enterprise levels.

MESPT offers bulk loans for on lending and a capacity building matching grant to facilitates development of ‘green loan products’ that are suitable for their clientele.

The revolving fund supports installation of Climate smart technologies such as Irrigation kits; Solar water pumps, solar lighting and heating systems; Biogas digesters; and production of Biomass fuels among other solid waste management solutions.

Result Based Financing

This is an incentive based Programme that targets financial institutions and Distributors of domestic solar and energy saving cook stove products.

The incentives are critical motivation for the beneficiaries to overcome typical but temporary market development risks and accelerate product distribution to end users by scaling up of their operations. The incentives are based on number of units and value of cook stoves and solar systems distributed. The RBF projects are funded by DFID under a Programme called Energizing Development (EnDev Kenya), and locally managed by GIZ and SNV and implemented by MESPT.

Annual Green Growth Conference

For the past three years, MESPT in conjunction with DANIDA have been convening the National Green Growth Conference & Exhibition to bring together stakeholders to showcase and share knowledge pertaining green economy realization. The conference draws its relevance in addressing challenges encountered while transiting to a greener economy, sharing experiences and opportunities that can be tapped for synergy.

The 2017 conference will be the 4^th of its kind and will be rallying collective action towards green growth intervention in key impact sectors of agriculture, energy, manufacturing and transport.