African Development Bank plans $1.5bn green facility
The African Development Bank is setting up a $1.5 billion green finance facility to help meet surging demand for money to develop clean energy and defend infrastructure against floods, storms and rising seas exacerbated by global warming.
The facility will be formally unveiled at the COP27 climate summit taking place in Egypt next month.
The AfDB plans to partner with commercial banks and governments to fund projects, Audrey-Cynthia Yamadjako, the AfDB’s principal climate officer, said in an interview this week.
“It’s a way to develop a sustainable pipeline of well-structured projects,” she said.
The fund aims to encourage investment in climate finance needs on the continent, which aren’t being met by cash-strapped African governments or by developed nations.
The Nationally Determined Contributions of African nations – plans presented to the United Nations charting national responses to global warming – would need $2.8 trillion in funding by 2030, according to an AfDB presentation.
The lender aims to raise $100 million by the end of 2023 and the full $1.5 billion by the end of 2025, a small proportion of the financing the continent will need to adapt to a warming planet.
Initial funding will partly come from the Climate Investment Funds and other partners, Yamadjako said.
The issue of climate financing is expected to take center stage at next month’s UN climate summit as developing nations demand more support from industrialised countries that prospered for nearly two centuries at the expense of the planet.
