Financing climate resilience, expanding opportunity: GIF's new strategy for a changing world.

The world has changed dramatically since the Global Innovation Fund was founded more than a decade ago.

Climate shocks are becoming more frequent and severe. Development budgets are under pressure. And millions of people are facing a growing overlap of environmental and economic vulnerability.

These challenges are often discussed separately. But for the communities most affected, they are deeply interconnected.

For a smallholder farmer in Africa or Asia, one failed rainy season, one flood, or one climate-linked health crisis can push a household into poverty. Women and girls, displaced communities and those living at the margins of markets and services often face the greatest exposure and have the fewest resources to recover. According to the World Bank's Atlas of Global Development 2026, 1.5 billion people – almost one in five globally – are at high risk from climate-related hazards because they are both highly exposed and highly vulnerable.

That is why GIF's new strategy takes aim at a central challenge: how to finance climate adaptation and resilience in ways that also expand inclusive economic opportunity.

This is more than a strategic refresh. It is the culmination of more than a decade of learning about what it takes to scale innovations that improve lives.

Applying a Decade on Learning to the Realities of a Changing World

This new strategy comes at a time of profound global disruption.

Traditional aid models are under strain. Progress on poverty reduction has slowed. Climate impacts are accelerating. At the same time, many of the communities most vulnerable to climate change remain excluded from the finance, services and opportunities they need to build resilience.

Since 2014, GIF has invested in innovators tackling some of the world's toughest development challenges. Through grants, debt and equity investments, we have backed entrepreneurs and organisations that often fall into the "missing middle" – too early or too risky for traditional investors, but beyond the scope of conventional grant funding.

Over the past decade, we have learned that innovation can help communities become more resilient while creating economic opportunity. But we have also learned that promising solutions rarely scale on their own.

They need patient, catalytic capital. They need support to strengthen their business models and demonstrate impact. And they need investors willing to take risks before commercial markets are ready.

This is where GIF has focused its efforts.

Today, our portfolio includes more than 85 innovations. In the inherently high-risk world of innovation, 40% of our mature portfolio has achieved scale, with a further 20% firmly on the path to doing so. Our funding has mobilised private capital at an eight-times multiple against our grants and equity investments, demonstrating how catalytic finance can unlock larger flows of funding.

We have launched new investment vehicles, including GIF Growth, expanded our work at the intersection of climate and health, and embedded gender-lens investing throughout our portfolio as a 2X partner.

Most importantly, these investments are helping demonstrate that blended finance can work: de-risking innovation, attracting additional capital and enabling solutions to reach millions of people.

A sharper focus for the decade ahead

These lessons have shaped our strategy to 2030.

Our vision is a future where scalable and sustainable innovation systematically improves the lives of the world's most vulnerable people. To achieve that vision, we are sharpening our focus around two core, interconnected priorities: Climate Resilience and Inclusive Economic Opportunity.

Across both pillars, we will focus on innovations that reach people too often excluded from markets, services, finance and decision-making, particularly women and girls, smallholder farmers, informal workers and communities facing overlapping climate and economic vulnerabilities.

We are seeking out and accelerating solutions that deliver triple dividend benefits: protecting vulnerable communities from climate risks, strengthening economic resilience and generating positive environmental outcomes.

This could mean climate-smart agricultural services that help farmers adapt to changing weather while increasing incomes. It could mean resilient water systems, productive energy solutions, innovative financing mechanisms or health interventions that address climate-related risks. What matters is that these innovations help people adapt and thrive in a changing world.

Scaling solutions together

We are aiming to mobilise $250 million by the end of 2030, focusing our geographical efforts across ten African and five Asian countries and reaching 300 million people with measurable life improvements.

To deliver this strategy, we will allocate our capital through a 70:15:15 model:

• 70% of our efforts will go directly into investments—deploying patient, catalytic capital to validate business models and de-risk climate and economic innovations.
• 15% will target systemic barriers, working to clear away the policy and market bottlenecks in lower-income countries that prevent brilliant innovations from flourishing.
• 15% will be dedicated to learning and influencing, sharing our insights on scaling pathways to crowd in larger impact investors and commercial capital.

GIF's role is not to scale innovations alone. Our role is to act as a scale enabler, helping innovators bridge the gap between promising ideas and sustainable scale. We work alongside entrepreneurs to strengthen governance, impact measurement, ESG practices and business models until they are ready to attract larger pools of commercial and impact capital.

But no single organisation can close the climate adaptation financing gap or build resilient economies on its own.

Achieving meaningful progress will require deeper collaboration across philanthropy, development finance institutions, governments and private investors. It will require partners willing to take smart risks, back locally relevant solutions and build on proven innovations once they have been de-risked.

Because the innovations capable of transforming lives already exist. The challenge now is ensuring they have the capital, support and partnerships needed to achieve scale.