The African Development Bank (AfDB) has assembled experts to share perspectives on how the climate finance gap can be filled.
Green Banks have a critical role to play in overcoming climate finance gaps, and the African Development Bank, in partnership with the Islamic Development Bank, has brought together leading investors to assess how this can be achieved.
Experts from both multilateral development banks, the Nordic Development Bank, and Pollination Group – a climate change investment and advisory firm – met with political leaders and the focus turned quickly to the scale of opportunity available to green finance facilities in Africa.
Dr Rania A. Al-Mashat, Egypt’s minister of international cooperation, said: “The creation of green funds and green financing mechanisms is key for financing green projects in Africa. We need the government, the MDBs, the local financial institutions and actors to work together to drive sustainable initiatives”.
Egypt, which will host COP27 in November 2022, is seeking to serve as a role model for other countries in the region and has a number of major renewable projects underway. Its government also preparing a guidebook to help other governments, multilateral development banks and the private sector engage in the mobilisation of climate finance.
Next year the AfDB will launch the African Green Finance Facility Fund (AG3F), which will provide technical assistance grants to help local governments and financial institutions design green finance facilities and develop pipelines of sustainable, green “Paris aligned” projects. This will be important to helping countries capitalise green financing facilities and co-finance project pipelines by providing concessional resources and de-risking mechanisms to allow private investors to participate in green transactions.
Mrs. Audrey-Cynthia Yamadjako, trust fund manager and coordinator of the Green Bank Initiative at the AfDB said: “Mainstreaming the Green Bank Model presents a broad opportunity to fill the climate and environment finance gap for Africa. MDBs and International Financial Institutions have a crucial role to play in capacitating local financial institutions to develop local green pipeline of projects and ease their access to the resources they may need to support a sustainable, decarbonised development and prosperity in Africa.”
