5 MENA Climatetech Startups That Make Cities Greener

The benefit of climatetech startups to the region is immense, as they can provide cleaner and more cost-effective solutions to address climate change. They can also result in significant job creation and economic growth.

Climate technologies, also referred to as climatetech, are technologies employed to tackle climate change. These technologies play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing waste, and mitigating the adverse effects of global warming.

These five Arab startups are working to make our cities greener.

FortyGuard

UAE

FortyGuard uses AI technology to cool cities by identifying, controlling, and cooling the overheated outdoors.

The UAE-based FortyGuard monitors outdoor temperatures using cloud-based AI tools. By streaming high-resolution heat maps and providing temperature analysis, it helps urban planners, developers, industries and governments make environmentally conscious decisions. FortyGuard's flagship product, FortyEngine, gathers data, analyzes it through an AI-powered platform, and delivers visualized data results. 

Clean City

Morocco

Marrakesh-based startup Clean City uses technology to encourage transparency and citizen engagement for urban improvement. Clean City facilitates trash collection and public maintenance services by allowing users to upload geo-tagged pictures of uncollected trash, street light outages, or potholes on the road, which are then reviewed and addressed by city officials. 

Users can also use the platform for calls to action to organize cleanup campaigns. Users are incentivized to submit pictures and gain points, which they can use to get free coffee and movie tickets.

ECOHUB

UAE

EcoHub is a UAE-based group of factories that supply urban street furniture and landscape design products from recycled materials based on polymer-sand technology. 

Schaduf

Egypt

Established by two brothers, Sherif and Tarek Hosny, Schaduf aims to marry aquaponics and rooftop farming with urban greening. Its first product was rooftop farms, and since its inception, the company has developed additional products, including wall gardens, landscaping services, and at-home farming accessories like tabletop growers. Schaduf has added green spaces in low- and high-income communities and delivered workshops on how to grow in small urban spaces. Over the years, the team has created more than 9,600 square meters of green walls, designed 4.1 million square meters of landscape, and installed more than 400 rooftop farms. 

Today, Schaduf has more than 50 employees and has delivered projects across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the UK. 

Space Biotech

Tunisia

Space Biotech combines AI with the global surveillance capabilities of space-based assets. Based on satellite imagery, Space Biotech applies AI tools to extract valuable information about irregular waste dumps. Space Biotech focuses on mapping garbage that contains a high percentage of organic material to enhance and support actors active in biogas clean energy production.

Space Biotech also works on detecting and tracking other types of waste susceptible to having a significant impact on the environment and supports international efforts to reduce their effects.

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CORRECTION: This article was edited for length and clarity on 29 November 2023.