Fundação Kijani, or the Kijani Foundation, is our social investment initiative. It will work with local communities to identify projects geared to social and community advancement and with specialized agencies and social action groups to ensure effective implementation. Fundação Kijani is an independent, registered non-profit entity.

Our Mission

Our mission is to develop, scale-up and promote poverty-reduction, health, education and environmental solutions for small communities in the developing countries in which Kijani Energy operates.

Our Approach

Our approach is based on a preference for the concept of a 'hand up' instead of a 'hand-out'—principally because the former is more likely to be sustainable and to generate more positive externalities. Our primary focus is on identifying and supporting entrepreneurship activities and promoting gender equality. Based on needs identified in conjunction with local communities, we will sponsor community improvement projects in the areas of healthcare, education and stewardship of environment resources. We will work with local communities, government and social action groups to ensure that our contributions are in line with the social interest and to launch a broad-based Public Social Private Partnership (PSPP).

Current Projects 

To help us better delineate and implement our social responsibility vision, and also to promote local research capacity, we are working with the Graduate School of Business at the Universidade Católica de Moçambique to carry out an initial study into appropriate community partnership models. We intend this study to mark the start of a full-fledged research program that will make a significant contribution in the area of corporate social responsibility. In particular, these research studies will contribute ideas on implementation issues (under local conditions) and methods to create effective partnerships between investors, local communities, governments, and the development aid community – with each agent contributing according to its own comparative advantage and creating synergies for the benefit of all.

To help marshal the financial and human resources necessary to ensure that this ambitious research program is a success, we are currently seeking outside financial support from international organizations—which would help to establish valuable linkages and beneficial access to existing knowledge and experienced resources.

Initially, we believe there is substantial scope for rural livelihood improvement through various community and business partnerships related to our commercial activities—allowing us to take immediate advantage of our comparative strength. In the area of Báruè, we have already signed a Memorandum-of-Understanding with an association of smallholders whereby we will work with government extension workers to improve techniques and practices (thus helping to improve yields and profitability) and we will stand ready to buy the association’s production at market prices (thus mitigating key market risks for smallholders).

In line with the recommendations to come from the ongoing research project (as noted above), we intend to work with specialized agencies to enhance access to credit for members of the association of smallholders.