Absa Bank Kenya backs green finance push as businesses seek sustainable growth
Charles Wokabi, Head of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs at Absa Bank Kenya
As Kenya’s private sector searches for practical routes to sustainability, Absa Bank Kenya is putting billions behind the transition — and calling on the financial industry to do far more.
By Agnes Mukami
Kenya’s financial sector faced a direct challenge yesterday to move beyond tokenistic environmental gestures and embed sustainability at the core of business decision-making, as industry leaders, financiers, and policymakers gathered in Nairobi for the GreenShift Forum 2026.
Absa Bank Kenya emerged as a central voice at the forum, held on 22 October under the theme Powering Kenya’s Sustainability Transformation, contributing to discussions on how green finance, climate investment, and innovative funding mechanisms can help Kenyan businesses convert sustainability commitments into measurable economic outcomes. The forum drew together executives, sustainability practitioners, energy innovators, and government representatives to examine six interconnected areas: environmental, social and governance priorities as a competitive advantage, green finance and carbon markets, electric mobility, the circular economy, renewable energy innovation, and public-private partnerships.
Charles Wokabi, Head of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs at Absa Bank Kenya, delivered one of the forum’s more pointed interventions, cautioning businesses against reducing their sustainability credentials to peripheral activities. “If you are an organisation that is serious about sustainability, then sustainable business practices must be reflected in your core business — both in the way you manage your operations and in the propositions you offer your customers,” he said. “Planting and growing trees is good, but it should not equate to your entire sustainability story.”
Wokabi also pressed the financial sector to adopt bolder and more creative approaches to funding the green transition, specifically highlighting guarantees and risk-sharing arrangements as tools that could significantly expand the range of sustainable projects able to attract bank financing. “There is a growing need for innovative financing mechanisms that make sustainable projects more viable,” he said. “This is one of the ways we are growing our sustainable finance portfolio at Absa, towards our target of 30% of total portfolio by 2030.”
That target is backed by a substantial track record. Absa Bank Kenya has channelled more than KSh200B into sustainable finance over the past five years, supporting green and climate initiatives alongside inclusive finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, women in business, and young entrepreneurs. In 2025 alone, the bank disbursed KSh55.3B in sustainable finance, including KSh6.5B directed specifically at climate finance. Its Sustainability Strategy 2026–2030 sets a clear ambition: sustainable finance representing at least 30% of total portfolio by the decade’s end.
The forum’s broader programme reflected the growing recognition that sustainability and commercial competitiveness are not opposing forces. For businesses, the argument is that sustainability initiatives anchored in genuine customer needs and sound commercial logic will outperform those driven by reputational management alone. For financiers, the imperative is to develop a sufficiently deep understanding of clients’ business models to structure financing that supports viable, long-term investment rather than short-term compliance.
GreenShift Forum 2026 did not resolve the considerable challenges that remain in Kenya’s green transition — financing gaps, regulatory uncertainty, and uneven access to climate capital among them. But in bringing together stakeholders from finance, technology, energy, mobility, and policy under one roof, it offered something the transition urgently needs: a space where practical pathways, not just aspirational targets, can be honestly examined.
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