Investing in women, powering the future: A conversation with Angela Muraguri

Angela Muraguri, investment manager at KawiSafi Ventures, shares how the fund is advancing gender equity, supporting female entrepreneurs, and drivingclimate resilience through impact investing.

Mar 6, 2025 By: Acumen

Blog
Energy
East Africa

As the world grapples with the dual challenges of climate change and energy poverty, women are on the front lines — both as those most affected and as key drivers of solutions. Recognizing this, Acumen applies a gender lens across its investments, ensuring women and girls remain central to impact-driven solutions that promote economic prosperity, build climate resilience, and improve livelihoods.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, we spoke with Angela Muraguri, investment manager at KawiSafi Ventures — an Acumen-sponsored venture equity fund investing in companies that scale decarbonized, distributed solar energy solutions for underserved communities in East Africa. From launching a gender action plan to increasing female representation and supporting women-led businesses, Angela shares how KawiSafi is embedding gender equity into its strategy to create a lasting impact across the energy sector in East Africa.

Q: Tell us about your career trajectory and what led you to your current work at KawiSafi.

Angela: My initial exposure to finance began with my first job at Deloitte, where I worked in transaction advisory supporting large-scale M&A transactions across East Africa. This role introduced me to the fundamentals of finance, business growth, and acquisitions. However, I soon realized that these transactions primarily benefited large corporations with little direct impact on local communities. Wanting to see tangible impact trickle down to these communities, I pursued a master’s in international development and later joined a family office investing in high-potential sectors in East Africa. My focus eventually turned to energy access and renewable energy, which led me to KawiSafi. The fund’s mission aligns with my passion for driving impact while remaining in finance.

As an investment manager at KawiSafi, my work spans sourcing deals, facilitating transactions, and supporting portfolio companies post-investment. I also sit on the boards of two of our portfolio companies and oversee the Technical Assistance Facility, a $5-million grant that supports our portfolio companies and the broader energy access ecosystem.

Q: What motivates you to do this work, and why is it important?

Angela: We’re committed to making low-carbon technologies accessible to drive inclusive green growth. This region needs economic opportunities, employment, and improved livelihoods. The companies we support create jobs, generate economic activity, and scale impact in ways that wouldn’t be possible without our funding. We’re not only promoting economic prosperity but also looking at the future, ensuring climate resilience and long-term sustainability. Another one of my motivations is breaking the perceived and actual risks of investing in Africa. By successfully allocating capital to this region, we demonstrate that investing here can be both impactful and profitable. Being a steward for bringing capital into this region is really meaningful to me, and this is why I do what I do.

Q: How is your work at KawiSafi connected to women in emerging markets?

Angela: Women are integral to every aspect of our work. Firstly, they are significant beneficiaries of the low-carbon technologies we promote, such as clean residential energy, cooking, and mobility solutions. Many of our portfolio companies’ products, directly improve women’s lives by saving time, increasing safety, and enhancing economic opportunities. Women also play key roles in supply chains, distribution networks, and decision-making structures in our markets. However, we recognize the funding gap for female entrepreneurs and are committed to increasing the number of women-led businesses in our portfolio. Our goal is to have at least 40% of our investments go to female founders. I’m personally invested in increasing women’s participation across all of these areas: as consumers, founders, or part of the different supply chains we work with.

Q: What unique barriers do women face in the markets you serve?

Angela: Female founders face structural challenges, including limited access to investor networks which have historically been male-dominated, unconscious biases in funding decisions, and societal perceptions of women’s leadership capabilities. Biases also exist in how female founders are evaluated, with research indicating that female founders get more questions about their ability to lead, manage growth and risks, and how they intend to balance professional and personal responsibilities — questions rarely posed to men.

Q: How is KawiSafi’s strategy designed to overcome these barriers?

Angela: We actively work to mitigate gender bias internally by conducting training to recognize and address biases in investment and specifically founder evaluation. We also have a fund-level gender action plan with key targets specifically: 1) to increase female representation in our investment team; 2) increase female participation on our portfolio company boards, as well as promoting gender-forward policies across the companies we invest in which we believe is important in attracting top female talent into the portfolio. 3) At the Ecosystem level, we’ve supported the training of female solar technicians to increase the talent pipeline for our portfolio companies, which is a big challenge. Looking forward, we’re also committed to supporting emerging sectors like e-mobility to consider and drive forward their gender participation and plan to engage to improve safety measures for women and ensure that this sector also increases opportunities for women across the continent.

“I believe we’ll see a wave of new female entrepreneurs emerging over the next few years, supported by networks and funding structures that didn’t exist before.”
Angela Muraguri, KawiSafi Ventures

Q: How does gender equity in KawiSafi’s investments contribute to climate resilience and ending energy poverty?

Angela: Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change due to their roles in, say, agriculture or informal labor, which have resulted in women having lower economic mobility overall. The businesses we invest in provide solutions that build resilience and increase options for increased economic opportunity. Many of our portfolio companies also provide financing options that help women overcome economic barriers to accessing these clean technologies and services. While it’s challenging to directly link every intervention to an outcome, we know that increasing women’s participation in climate solutions leads to more inclusive and sustainable outcomes.

Angela: In 2022, we invested in Sistema.bio, a company that manufactures biogas digesters as a sustainable alternative to wood and charcoal for cooking. Their product improves women’s health due to reduced air pollution and saves time spent collecting wood fuel. Beyond their impact-driven product, Sistema.bio is intentional about gender inclusivity: 40% of their board members and senior management are women, 25% of their workforce is female, and they have set targets to increase female participation in their workforce with a target of 50%. They also provide gender-forward workplace policies and stock ownership plans. Sistema.bio is a great example of how companies can integrate gender equity into their core business strategy.

Q: What trends in East Africa reinforce the opportunity ahead?

Angela: When I joined KawiSafi six years ago, gender lens investing wasn’t widely discussed, and the funding gap for female founders wasn’t acknowledged in the same way it is today. The fact that we are now having these conversations and that funders are actively working to address the gap is a significant shift. Organizations like 2X Global have helped institutionalize gender lens investing by providing frameworks and language that allow investors to integrate gender considerations into their funds.

This growing recognition is leading to meaningful changes, including more capital flowing to women-led businesses and increased support systems for female founders. As a result, I believe we’ll see a wave of new female entrepreneurs emerging over the next few years, supported by networks and funding structures that didn’t exist before. Regardless of how institutional frameworks evolve, on the ground we are witnessing more women stepping into entrepreneurship, and I expect many of them to be part of our portfolio in the coming years.

Shaping the future

By ensuring that more women have a seat at the table — whether as customers, on investment teams, in boardrooms, or as business owners — KawiSafi is shaping a more inclusive future. As gender lens investing gains momentum in East Africa, the next five years hold great potential for female entrepreneurs and the communities they serve.