ZEP-RE Joins the Call to Reimagine Capacity Building at FINAS 2025
Last week, at the heart of Nairobi’s Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC), ZEP-RE and its subsidiary ACRE Africa were on the ground at the 2025 Financing Agri-Food Systems Sustainably (FINAS) Summit, lending both voice and vision to one of the summit’s pivotal sessions:
Hosted by the African Development Bank’s Dr. Hassan Bashir, the session on Innovations in Capacity Building for Climate Insurance: Introducing the Africa Climate Risk Insurance Framework for Adaptation (ACRIFA) Academy marked a bold call to rethink how Africa prepares its workforce to meet the escalating challenges of climate risk.
At the core of climate resilience, it isn’t just infrastructure; it’s people. The ones designing, delivering, and scaling climate-smart insurance solutions that help African farmers bounce back from the next drought, flood, or failed season.
Representing ZEP-RE at the panel was Christine Gitachu, Training Manager at the ZEP-RE Academy, who contributed to two vital moments in the session:
On ZEP-RE’s Regional Training Model
Christine spotlighted ZEP-RE Academy’s boots-on-the-ground approach to building relevant capacity across Africa to address financial inclusion and climate challenges.
“Training isn’t a box to tick but the engine behind sustainable innovation. We must rethink capacity building as a core driver of change, embedded from day one in Africa’s journey toward climate resilience.” She mentioned
ZEP-RE Academy’s programs go beyond technical knowledge. They bridge policy, innovation, and consumer needs, empowering a new generation of stakeholders such as policymakers, insurance practitioners and vulnerable communities to navigate today’s climate threats and tomorrow’s opportunities.
On Regional Collaboration:
Christine called for deeper cross-sector coordination to address Africa’s capacity gaps at scale. That means shared investment in:
- Standardized climate insurance curricula
- Robust knowledge-sharing platforms
- Regulatory frameworks that support innovation without fragmentation
As she aptly put it “Africa’s resilience is not just about the innovative solutions we build but about building knowledge on those solutions with vulnerable communities to drive uptake and de-risk climate challenges.”
Across another panel, Stella Kimani, Chief Operations Officer at ACRE Africa, added dimension to the dialogue with a compelling case for blended finance.
On a separate panel, Stella Kimani, Operations Manager at ACRE Africa, delivered a powerful message on the role of technical financial innovation in scaling blended finance for African agriculture, which was moderated by Dr. Nungari Mwangi from the African Development Bank.
With her focus on making finance work at the last mile.
Stella highlighted:
- How ACRE Africa is de-risking agriculture for smallholder farmers
- Why contextual, localized solutions outperform one-size-fits-all models
- The urgency of aligning innovation with empathy to create solutions that reach and resonate with underserved communities
“Innovation isn’t just about the tech, it’s about understanding who we are building for and meeting them where they are,” she noted.
This was a resonant reminder that innovation isn’t just digital, it’s designing with dignity and financing with empathy.
What We Learned: Takeaways from FINAS 2025
- Invest in people as intentionally as we invest in products
- Standardization is not rigidity but a roadmap for scalability
- Collaboration across institutions is the only way to close Africa’s capacity gap
And perhaps most pressing of all:
While climate insurance could unlock over $100 billion annually in agri-finance, only 5% of global climate finance reaches Africa. Even fewer dollars support the human infrastructure, the very people needed to bring climate insurance from concept to impact.
ZEP-RE’s presence as both a thought partner and technical contributor reinforces its position as a builder of Africa’s future resilience.