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Are you dedicated to nurturing and growing your local ecosystem for Climate Tech entrepreneurship? Impact Pioneers '25 a leadership programme that welcomes you to exchange experiences with an international network of peers and gain first hand insights and experience from Sweden’s most successful Climate Tech entrepreneurship leaders and environments. The programme runs across 8 weeks, mixing weekly online sessions with a one-week onsite summit in Stockholm in October 2025.
Opportunity Details
Overview
Entrepreneurs are vital to the growth and prosperity of communities. But what role can entrepreneurs play in tackling climate change? And how can we imagine and build ecosystems that inspires and supports entrepreneurs to rise to this challenge?
Impact Pioneers ’25 is a leadership programme that sets out to convene leaders and enablers working in organisations and networks seeking to promote the nurture and growth of local entrepreneurship and innovation. The programme takes a starting point in the idea that entrepreneurship is a key driver of both economic and social development, as well as a force that can help accelerate the global green transition. The thematic focus of 2025 is ‘Enabling Climate Tech Entrepreneurship’, with ‘Climate Tech’ referring to technologies developed and used with the explicit purpose to help people, governments and others both address the sources and impacts of climate change.
Commitment and expectations
Impact Pioneers ’25 is scheduled to run across 8 weeks during fall 2025. A final schedule and timeline will be provided upon acceptance to the programme.
Participation in Impact Pioneers 25 is free of charge**.
The Swedish institute arranges and covers costs related to:
**With the exception of Saudi participants who carry their own costs for flights and accommodation.
Programme components:
Programme objectives
The shortterm programme objective of the programme is to strengthen capacity among leaders and enablers working in organisations and networks seeking to promote the nurture and growth of local Climate Tech entrepreneurship. By enabling the exchange and sharing of perspectives, cases, tools and frameworks the aspiration is to grow collective efforts and impact. A central component of the programme is also networking across an international cohort of peers and with the Swedish ecosystem. This component is key, as is the programme hopes to plant seeds for future partnerships, to the benefit of Climate Tech startups and scaleups as they seek to expand their growth, reach and overall impact.
The longterm programme objective is connected the SDG 8, target 8.3, which includes promotion of activities and policies that support entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation to encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and mediumsized enterprises, ultimately contributing to job creation and sustainable economic, social and environmental development.
Programme timeline 2025
Impact Pioneers’25 offers participants the opportunity to:
The application is open to entrepreneurship ecosystem leaders and practitioners who work in organizations and networks that want to develop their support for entrepreneurs with businesses related to sustainablility and green transition. More specifially, we imagine applicants to work as:
In 2025, the application is open to 26 programme countries (applicants must be a citizen and resident of one of them):
AFRICA: Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia
ASIA: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam
EUROPE: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia**, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine*, Türkiye
MENA: Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia***
*Ukrainian applicants who reside outside of Ukraine are also eligible to apply.
**Governmental employees in Georgia are not eligible to apply.
***Participants from Saudi Arabia carry their own costs for flights and accommodation, given that Saudi Arabia is not part of Swedish development cooperation funding agreements.
Applicants must meet the following requirements:
An applicant’s home organisation/business must also meet the following requirements:
Only applicants who have submitted a complete application will be considered for the programme.
The application consists of questions to assess formal requirements along with personal motivation. You will also be asked to submit a 60-120 second video and upload your most recent resume/CV.
Please carefully review the application overview (PDF) in order to be best prepared to submit your application. The overview gathers all questions and requirements in one place.
Once you have reviewed the application overview and prepared, you should submit your application through our application portal (provided by Dreamapply): LINK TO APPLICATION FORM
These are the steps you need to go through to submit your application:
Application assessment criteria
The applications will be evaluated by the Swedish Insititute to secure that formal requirements are met. If these are all met, a further review will be conducted by the Swedish Institute and an external reference board. The assessment will take the following review and criteria into account:
Admission
The Swedish Institute will admit 60 applicants to the programme from a shortlist. In the final selection the Swedish Institute will not only look at individual candidate profiles, but also consider the mix of candidate distribution across countries, individual and organisational profiles and gender.
Selected applicants will receive an acceptance letter no later than June 17th.
Apply for Swedish Institute Impact Pioneers