Where does our name come from?
Emi
Yoruba · life, spirit, breath
Vert
French · green
Emvert
the green life
Emvert joins a Yoruba word and a French one. Emi is Yoruba for life, spirit or breath, depending on how it is spoken. Vert is French for green. Put together, Emvert means the green life.
We chose a name rooted in an African language because the problem we are solving is an African one. Africa has contributed the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is greatly affected by climate change, and those effects fall on the incomes, livelihoods and socioeconomic standing of its people. African economies also depend largely on small and medium-sized businesses, which have the fewest resources to adapt.
Sustainability is now core to how businesses operate, how they are financed and who they can sell to. We believe African businesses, large and small, should not face structural or economic barriers to building sustainability into their businesses.
The idea behind the word matters to us too. Breath is the most basic sign of life, and carbon accounting measures exactly what goes into the air we all share. A business that understands its emissions is taking responsibility for that shared breath.
Why "Making Sustainability Count"?
Sustainability has become one of the most used words in business, and one of the least understood. Chief executives use it, programme managers use it, and it runs through almost every project in the development sector. Yet most people who use the word, including the people responsible for delivering it, cannot say what it amounts to in numbers.
That is not because they are careless. It is because sustainability has been hard to measure. The information sits in electricity bills, generator logs, fuel receipts and spreadsheets spread across sites and departments, and there have been few tools built to bring it together. Compiling the figures by hand takes months, and by the time they are ready, they are already out of date.
Our tagline is our answer. Emvert turns those everyday records into figures a business can count, check and report. When a company says it is sustainable, or sets itself a sustainability goal, it should be able to show the numbers behind that claim. That is what making sustainability count means.
Who are we?
We are a team with backgrounds in the green economy, climate finance, carbon markets and enterprise software development, working across the private, public and development sectors.
That experience showed us the same problem again and again. African businesses were being asked for sustainability information they had no easy way to produce. Many were paying consultants high fees, often in foreign currency, for work that had to be repeated every year. Others were using foreign software built for companies outside the continent. We started Emvert to fix that.
We are based in Abuja, Nigeria, and we work with businesses across Africa.
What are we here to do?
We have four aims, and every decision we make, from the features we build to the prices we charge, comes back to at least one of them.
- 01
We want the green economy to pay a dividend to Africa.
The move to a low-carbon economy is reshaping trade, investment and finance. African countries and businesses should gain from that shift, through access to climate finance, better terms from investors and new markets, instead of only facing new costs and new rules written elsewhere.
- 02
We want sustainability to be affordable for African businesses.
ESG reporting and carbon accounting should not cost an African company more than a company anywhere else, and it should not depend on foreign currency. We price in each customer's local currency and design our software so that the work done in the first year carries forward, instead of being rebuilt every year at the same cost.
- 03
We want to close the information gap.
The people who most need sustainability information, from finance teams to small business owners, are often the ones with the least access to it. Rules are published in technical documents, and guidance is locked behind consultancy fees. We publish what we know in plain language, free to read, so any business can understand what is expected of it.
- 04
We want better policy for sustainability.
We advocate for policies that make sustainability easier to achieve and its information easier to find, for large companies and small businesses alike. Good policy in Africa has to fit how African businesses actually work, and we bring that practical experience to the conversations where those policies are made.
How does our software help?
Our software is how we deliver on these aims every day. It collects a company's energy and fuel records, calculates its emissions using the emission factors for the country each site is in, and keeps the evidence behind every figure so it can be checked later. It then produces reports in the structure of IFRS S1 and S2, the sustainability standards that African countries are now adopting.
You can see how it works on the product page, check the reporting rules in your country in the compliance hub, or book a demo and see your own data run through the calculation.
Press kit
Journalists, partners and event organisers can download our logos, colours and brand guide here. The kit includes every version of the Emvert logo, horizontal and stacked, on white and on forest green, with and without our tagline, as well as the icon on its own. The brand guide explains how to use them and includes a short description of Emvert you can use as it is.
Colours
Our typeface is Mona Sans. Please use the logo as supplied, without recolouring, stretching or adding effects, and leave clear space around it. For interviews, media questions or permission to use the logo in other ways, email sales@emvert.com.