Deadline: April 30, 2025
Are you dedicated to nurturing and growing your local ecosystem for Climate Tech entrepreneurship? The Swedish Institute Impact Pioneers 2025 is a leadership programme that welcomes you to exchange experiences with an international network of peers and gain firsthand 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.
Impact Pioneers’25 offers participants the opportunity to:
- Grow from the exchange of experiences with an international community of peers.
- Be supported and inspired by new insights from the Climate Tech Entrepreneurship and Innovation forefront, such as practical cases, tools and frameworks.
- Get first-hand experience of the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in Stockholm and Sweden, recognised as one of the leading ecosystems in the impact entrepreneurship domain.
- Build long-term relations with Swedish foreign missions as well as Swedish entrepreneurs and organisations that seek to expand international reach, growth and impact.
Costs
The Swedish institute arranges and covers costs related to:
- Learning programme
- Flights to and from Sweden for the Sweden week onsite visit
- Accommodation, meals, transportation and insurance while in Sweden
**With the exception of Saudi participants who carry their own costs for flights and accommodation
Eligibility
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, they imagine applicants to work as:
- Startup hub/accelerator/incubation founders and managers
- Tech and innovation hub founders and managers
- University accelerator/incubator managers
- Public sector employees involved in work that supports Climate Tech entrepreneurship
Applicants must meet the following requirements:
- Be a citizen and resident of one of the 26 programme countries
- Work in an organisation or business systematically working to nurture and grow entrepreneurs.
- Have the mandate to develop new international partnerships for your organisation/business.
- Have a good working knowledge of both written and spoken English.
- Be willing to actively participate, provide support and share their experience and knowledge with other participants.
- Have identified opportunities and challenges that could be worked on during the programme to help their organisation improve its contribution to the local Climate Tech entrepreneurship ecosystem
An applicant’s home organisation/business must also meet the following requirements:
- Be locally owned and based in one of the programme countries.
- Be somehow hosting/coaching (or be in the process of starting up hosting/coaching of) entrepreneurs with business ideas that are related to sustainability and green transition.
- Run the organization/business with focus on contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Eligible Countries
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.
Application
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.
For more information, visit Impact Pioneers.
