Savant has opened applications for Cohort 4 of its Build Programme, the first edition of the deep-tech accelerator built explicitly for climate-tech and green economy hardware founders.
Top performers land grant funding of up to €80,000 (R1.6m), with the door open to follow-on equity from Savant for standouts. Applications close 15 June 2026, and the three-month programme runs from August to November out of Cape Town, backed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT).
Interesting insights on Savant’s Build Cohort 4
Cohort 4's sector list is tight: Decarbonisation, resource efficiency, sustainable energy, conservation, circular economy, water and waste management, with limited space for deep-tech hardware outside those buckets.
The narrowing matters because climate tech overtook FinTech as Africa's top startup investment sector in 2024, with African climate startups raising $413.9m by September that year and fintech's VC share sliding from 60% in 2022 to 25% by 2025. Persistent's $70m Africa Climate Venture Fund launched in March 2026, and the continent still has a $19bn-plus annual climate finance gap to chase.
Savant's track record feeds confidence: Cohort 2 pulled 150+ applications across eight African countries, Cohort 3 graduated 14 startups from SA, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Uganda and Build alumnus AI Diagnostics raised R85m post-programme.
Selected founders also get 12 months of Thinkubate LMS access, in-person Cape Town masterclasses, and credits across AWS, Zoho and HubSpot.
Cape Town is quietly building Africa's climate hardware bench
Savant joins GreenCape, the Climate Finance Accelerator SA and Century City's TerraFoundry to make Cape Town the densest concentration of climate-hardware support on the continent.
None of that gets the noise of a FinTech funding round, but it adds up. Savant going explicitly climate-first with Cohort 4 isn't a niche pivot; it's a recognition that the capital is moving and SA's bench is unusually deep for the sector.
If you're an African founder with hardware in any of the seven listed verticals, you've got two weeks to get your application in. The next round of climate cheques being written will favour the operators who got investor-ready first.
You might also like our earlier piece on the Savant build programme, May's sharpest SA founders may, and the SA companies may watchlist.
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