Financing Africa’s Restoration Champions
VIA Foundation is Africa’s first institution dedicated to financing community organizations and local enterprises that restore degraded land.
Across the African continent, thousands of community organizations wake up every morning with a simple belief: the land can heal and so can the people who depend on it.
Yet it is difficult for these locally led “champions” to access capital. Most global climate funds travel long and complicated routes through institutions far away from the landscapes they aim to help. To scale up investment, Africa needs a new organization that understands the reality of restoration champions, their donors, and their investors.
VIA Foundation will change that story. Founded in 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda, VIA Foundation is the first institution dedicated to financing and supporting Africa’s restoration champions.
We believe the people closest to the land should be the ones shaping its future.
We nurture local restoration champions by connecting them with the finance, training, and long-term support they deserve. And we work with them to co-design restoration projects that uplift livelihoods, protect biodiversity, and create a future where both people and ecosystems thrive.
We are bringing together donors, investors, governments, and local leaders to build a new restoration economy — one that centers African expertise, advances economic dignity, and ensures that success is measured not by paperwork, but by trees that grow and communities that flourish.
Services
Flexible
Funding
Technical
Support
World-Class
Monitoring
Blended &
Outcome Finance
The Portfolio
Across Africa, the Restore Local movement is writing the story of restoration one seedling at a time. In the hands of farmers in Ghana, those seeds grow into forests that protect cocoa yields. In the hills of Rwanda and Burundi, they stabilize riverbanks and protect food security and fisheries. In Kenya, they transform fragile drylands into thriving green corridors.
VIA Foundation supports 131 projects through the TerraFund partnership, founded by World Resources Institute, One Tree Planted, and Realize Impact. Each one is a testament to the power of local leadership: They are mothers starting cooperatives, young people finding purpose, and elders watching barren hillsides turn green again.
The Portfolio
Across Africa, the Restore Local movement is writing the story of restoration one seedling at a time. In the hands of farmers in Ghana, those seeds grow into forests that protect cocoa yields. In the hills of Rwanda and Burundi, they stabilize riverbanks and protect food security and fisheries. In Kenya, they transform fragile drylands into thriving green corridors.
VIA Foundation supports 131 projects through the TerraFund partnership, founded by World Resources Institute, One Tree Planted, and Realize Impact. Each one is a testament to the power of local leadership: They are mothers starting cooperatives, young people finding purpose, and elders watching barren hillsides turn green again.
Restoration is a collective act — no single institution can do it alone. VIA Foundation stands at the center of a powerful coalition of African leaders, global funders, technical experts, and community partners who share one belief.
With a mandate from the African Union Development Agency, support from World Resources Institute, and anchor funding from the Bezos Earth Fund and The Audacious Project, we are building systems where finance flows more equitably, progress is transparently communicated, and local institutions are strengthened for the long journey ahead.
The Team
VIA Foundation brings together African and global leaders with deep experience in land restoration, community development, finance, and institutional management. We ensure that every dollar entrusted to us is used responsibly, transparently, and with a clear mission: to serve the communities restoring Africa’s land.
Our team of 15+ staff members have integrity at their core.
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