C3 wins RFF grant to launch women's climate accelerator in MENA
C3, a B Corp-certified impact platform backed by UAE venture capital firm Global Ventures, has received a grant from the Resilient Futures Fund (RFF) to launch the EmpowerHer Climate Program, a six-month online accelerator targeting climate-adaptation startups operating across the Middle East and North Africa. Applications are open until 31 August 2026.
The RFF is managed by 2X Global and supported by a consortium of corporate and philanthropic backers including Amazon, Visa, Reckitt, the Skoll Foundation and the UPS Foundation. The fund channels catalytic capital into intermediary organisations that can strengthen ecosystems around climate solutions that benefit, involve or are led by women and girls.
The programme
EmpowerHer Climate will admit more than 30 startups regardless of founder gender, provided their solution directly addresses climate resilience for women and girls in MENA. Selected cohort companies will receive capacity-building support across climate finance, solution design, market strategy, impact measurement and gender-responsive leadership, alongside expert mentorship. The ten highest-potential startups, selected by an advisory panel, will share USD 150,000 in equity-free grant funding and earn a pitch slot at a regional Demo Day in Egypt.
Medea Nocentini, Senior Partner at Global Ventures and founder of C3, said: "MENA is on the frontlines of climate change, and women and girls bear a disproportionate share of that burden. Yet the enterprises building solutions to this crisis remain chronically underfunded. EmpowerHer Climate exists to close that gap."
Jessica Espinoza, CEO of 2X Global, added that the fund invests in intermediaries able to mobilise additional capital and ensure climate solutions benefiting women and girls can grow and scale across the region.
Market context
The MENA climate-tech funding landscape remains thinner than comparable markets in Europe and North America, partly because early-stage climate infrastructure is costly and exits are long-dated. A number of development-finance institutions and blended-finance vehicles, including those linked to COP28 commitments made in Dubai in 2023, have pledged to channel more capital into climate adaptation in emerging markets, but execution at the startup level has been uneven.
Gender-lens investing has matured as a discipline over the past five years, with 2X Global itself one of the more established certification and fund-management bodies in the space. Corporate backers such as Amazon and Visa have been directing philanthropic capital through similarly structured funds as part of broader sustainability and ESG commitments, though grant amounts and disbursement timelines are rarely disclosed in detail. C3 did not disclose the total grant value received from the RFF.
The EmpowerHer programme sits at the intersection of two growing funding priorities: climate adaptation (as distinct from mitigation) and gender-responsive finance. Regulators and development banks are increasingly requiring gender analysis in climate-finance proposals, a trend that could improve the commercial prospects for startups that emerge from programmes like this one. For C3 and Global Ventures, the accelerator also serves as a deal-flow mechanism into the firm's broader $400 million AUM emerging-markets portfolio, which spans fintech, digital health, edtech and agritech across Africa and the Middle East.