On the dusty streets of Lagos, there’s a growing opportunity most climate investors would miss. The 100,000 informal e-waste collectors behind Nigeria’s informal recycling economy are powering a business model that Silicon Valley never envisioned: one that treats environmental crisis and social inclusion not as trade-offs, but as the same problem requiring the same solution – and it comes with a major financial upside.  

 These collectors are transforming discarded devices and electronics into valuable, reusable resources that enable the global energy transition and feed our insatiable desire for technological development. And local companies like Hinckley E-Waste Recycling ensure that they have safer working conditions, fairer compensation and better livelihoods.

This is one example of the quiet revolution happening when humans are put at the centre of climate investing; it’s a paradigm shift that’s forcing our industry to confront an uncomfortable truth. For too long, climate finance has treated people as problems to be managed, instead of a vital part of the solution.

The missing link in climate finance 

Climate finance grew to over USD 600 billion in 2020, yet the newest IPCC reports make clear that unequal climate impacts are escalating. In other words, the money is flowing, but not in the right direction. Despite the Global North accounting for over 60% of global emissions, the 10 countries most threatened by climate change are in the Global South. This isn’t just unfair – it’s financially foolish. 

In their September 2025 piece for Alliance magazine, the Honnold Foundation argues that “In philanthropy and impact investing, enhancing human well-being is frequently treated as a secondary benefit of climate action, when in fact, it is a fundamental prerequisite for the adoption and durability of any sustainable solution.” The foundation, which focuses on community-led climate projects, reports an over 95% success rate with investments others dismiss as “risky bets” – a track record that should make traditional investors pause.

The conventional “co-benefit” framework – where improved lives are a nice side effect rather than the core objective – fundamentally misunderstands how climate solutions actually scale. The best climate solutions immediately improve people’s lives by design, not by coincidence.

The community-led renewable energy initiatives supported by the Honnold Foundation epitomize this approach. For instance, when solar-powered river boats connect isolated Amazonian communities, they don’t just reduce diesel pollution – they offer alternatives to extractive industries and immediate economic benefits. And when schools across the developing world switch to renewable energy, they don’t just lower emissions – they reduce operating costs while expanding educational opportunities.

A business case hiding in plain sight

Goodwell has spent nearly two decades proving that smart, patient capital allocation can deliver social and environmental impact and financial returns at the same time. Goodwell invests in locally led, tech-driven businesses across Africa to improve access to basic products and services like banking, food, transport, and energy. When evaluating potential investment opportunities, we also analyse the environmental angle, asking “How does this company help communities improve their livelihoods and better deal with climate change?” 

Our climate lens considers both mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. Every sector we invest in must play a role in climate resilience, covering a wide range of interventions from creating more efficient supply chains and reducing food waste, tointroducing electric vehicles and providing effective insurance coverage.

Our Nigerian fintech investee, Paga – a company making it easier for individuals and SMEs to spend and manage their money – offers a striking example of how people and planet-focused benefits go hand in hand. In 2024 alone, Paga processed over NGN 8.6 trillion (approximately EUR 5.7 billion) in total transactions from its 26.7 million users, and has remained profitable despite a tough fundraising environment and ongoing currency fluctuations.

What’s their secret? Paga’s profitability is depends on 51,288 local agents across Nigeria who provide a critical bridge between cash and the digital economy. This human infrastructure – the network of “mom and pop” shops, pharmacies, and grocery stores that serve as financial access points – provides multiple benefits. It brings basic financial services to people who would otherwise travel hours to reach a traditional bank, reducing carbon emissions from transport. It also creates formal employment in underserved communities, building climate resilience through economic inclusion.

From e–waste to empowerment 

Returning to the example of e-waste, Goodwell’s most recent investment provides compelling evidence for human-centred climate investing. 

In July 2025, Goodwell and partner Alitheia Capital invested in Hinckley E-Waste Recycling through their uMunthu II fund, financing the construction of Nigeria’s first lithium-ion and lead-acid battery recycling facilities. The plants will collect and recycle up to 30,000 tonnes of e-waste per year, addressing a crisis directly where it originates: Nigeria generates 500,000 tonnes of e-waste per year, making it the region’s largest e-waste producer and third largest in Africa.

The environmental case is clear: in sub-Saharan Africa, only an estimated 1% to 15% of generated e-waste is recycled, leading to land, soil, and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Hinckley CEO Adrian Clews, however, frames this as an opportunity. “Although e-waste recycling is an emerging income stream for many people in Africa, it is still generally informal and unregulated. At Hinckley, we see that improving e-waste recycling infrastructure has the potential to decrease negative health and environmental outcomes, while increasing average incomes for over 100,000 Nigerians currently working as informal waste collectors.”

This is human-centered investing in practice: start with the people doing the work, examine their constraints and motivations, and then build systems that improve their livelihoods while addressing environmental problems.  

Principles for successful human-centred investing 

What do successful human-centred climate investments all have in common? Research and practice are converging on several key principles: 

Start with lived experience. The people closest to a problem are best positioned to understand what solutions will work in their context. This sounds obvious, but most climate finance still flows in from abroad, with investment criteria set by people who will never experience the local challenges firsthand. 

Embrace adaptation AND mitigation. In practice, climate adaptation and mitigation are two sides of the same coin. Taking a pragmatic approach to local climate investing ensures that communities can adapt to inevitable climate shifts, while reducing future carbon emissions. This integrated view eliminates the false dichotomy between helping people cope with climate change now versus preventing it from worsening later.

Design for immediate human benefit. While carbon-centric metrics track emissions reductions, human-centered outcomes reveal whether those reductions translate into real improvements in people’s lives, which is essential for evaluating the true impact and sustainability of climate solutions. Electric vehicles succeeded because they became offered a better solution for consumers’ wallets and lifestyles—the climate benefit followed the human benefit, not the reverse. 

Build hybrid infrastructure. The dominant assumption that climate solutions should primarily be digital, with seamless apps replacing messy human interactions, for example, has proven untrue in emerging markets. The most resilient path to scaling fintech in Africa isn’t purely digital—it’s a hybrid of physical and digital infrastructure. Our experience shows that success on the continent depends on vast networks of human agents who provide a critical bridge between the digital world and traditional economy. 

The challenge with human-centred investing is moving from principle to practice. We believe it starts by putting inclusion at the center of a net-zero or green economy strategy, especially in emerging markets, rather than regarding it as a potential benefit or byproduct. To properly assess potential contributions to an inclusive society, investors need to understand how specific climate issues intersect with historical injustices and risk. Ideally, investors seeking social impact should start by identifying communities and regions disproportionately impacted by climate issues and with limited access to viable solutions.

Returns that make a concrete difference

Obviously, with growing pressure on the financial returns of impact investing, the business case for human-centred climate investing isn’t just about avoiding reputational risk or satisfying impact mandates – a growing range of research quantifies the huge opportunity cost of ignoring it.

A recent study by the World Resources Institute found that investing USD 1 in adaptation can yield more than USD 10.50 in benefits over a span of 10 years. But here’s the more surprising finding: over 65% of the monetised benefits were unrelated to expected climate shocks, covering everything from job creation and productivity gains to healthier communities and environments. In many cases, these broader development gains, related to direct social benefits for communities or individuals, matched or exceeded the value of avoided losses.  

We have seen clear evidence of this with our investee OmniRetail. The company’s revenue grew from USD 0.25 million in 2019 to USD 139.88 million in 2022 with a compound annual growth rate of 772.39%, while employee headcount expanded from 11 to 896. OmniRetail provides digital retailing services and financial solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in sub-Saharan Africa, modernising operations for informal shops, often owned by women. This isn’t just financial inclusion or climate-friendly tech—it’sboth, inseparably.

Resistance and what it reveals

Although the evidence is clear to us, we see persistent skepticism regarding human-centred investing. Some argue it’s too slow for the urgency of our climate crisis. Others are convinced that putting human needs first dilutes the potential of environmentalimpact.

The speed argument doesn’t hold up. Top-down climate solutions that ignore local context don’t scale slowly – they fail completely. The graveyard of climate initiatives is littered with technically brilliant projects that communities never adopted. The relevance and sustainability of any new program is both a design and a marketing problem. Investors must ensure their communications emphasise the human improvements enabled by climate solutions – a core step in generating bottom-up demand that increases local advocacy. 

The “dilution” concern also reflects an important misunderstanding. Don Norman, the researcher who helped establish human-centered design principles, explains that it’s not just about humans, it’s about humanity, saying, “When we design for humanity, we cannot stop with people.” By placing the planet itself as a stakeholder in the (investment) design process, we can ensure that the products and services we invest in create long-term value for the users as well as the environment. 

Uncomfortable conclusion 

Human-centred climate investing is still in its infancy and operates at the fringes of the climate and social impacting investment space. Taking this approach forward will require changes in current power structures and decision-making processes.

Traditional climate finance assumes that expertise flows from the “developed” to “developing” world, from academic models to local communities, from investor theses to portfolio company implementation. Human-centred, inclusion-focused investing inverts this approach, recognising that informal waste collectors navigating Lagos, smallholder farmers managing undependable rainfall, and female retailers building businesses without banks have legitimate insights and expertise.   

In short: the climate crisis might not be solved by brilliant people in air-conditioned offices optimising abstract systems; instead, it might be solved by brilliant people in underserved communities solving concrete problems with appropriate means that improve livelihoods while strengthening the resilience of our environment.  

Therefore, as climate finance scales, investors need to make a difficult choice: they can continue to employ the same approaches that helped create our current state of affairs, or they can embrace the possibility that the best solutions – for social ANDenvironmental gains – come from the people in the communities they claim to serve.