Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, said Tuesday that the partnership between the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) will enhance Africa’s capability to face the challenges of climate and development action, especially those related to finance.
Mohieldin made the remarks during his participation in the partnership signing event between GFANZ and the AfDB on the sidelines of the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) held in Nairobi.
“This kind of partnership is important because it brings together development finance institutions, national and regional banks, the private sector, the insurance sector and ultimate risk mitigators in order to face challenges, bridge financing gaps and seize opportunities for the actual implementation of development and climate action,” Mohieldin said.
He said GFANZ is doing a good job and racing against time to finance climate action, especially emission mitigation activities. The alliance has partnerships at the regional level in Asia, Latin America and Africa with the aim of bridging financing gaps related to climate and development action through scaling private sector participation.
“To achieve these goals, GFANZ is cooperating with institutions with the same objectives such as the AfDB, which encourages the stimulation of public financing at the national level and motivates the private sector to play a greater role in financing and implementing climate and development projects,” Mohieldin said.
The climate champion noted that climate financing can provide solutions to Africa’s food, energy and debt crises, through concessional financing, private sector participation and activation of innovative finance instruments. He stressed that financing mitigation and Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda activities are financing for various SDGs.
Mohieldin said that the GFANZ – AfDB partnership will work according to three priorities, the first of which is to support country platforms through dealing with the challenges they face such as institutional reform, policy-making, the role of laws and governance.
The second priority is knowledge sharing, providing technical assistance and capacity building, while the third one is to activate innovative finance tools, debt swaps for investment in nature and climate, and help in activating the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI).
Mohieldin highlighted the Five Regional Roundtables Initiative that resulted in a large number of investable, bankable and implementable climate and development projects in Africa.
He explained that these projects have succeeded in attracting the attention of IFIs, MDBs and climate finance funds, foremost of which is the Green Climate Fund (GCF), saying that these projects also represent an area of cooperation between GFANZ and African finance institutions in order to finance and implement them.
In a related context, Mohieldin chaired the meeting of the Board of the African Network of the Glasgow Alliance (GFANZ Africa) where he praised the efforts made by the network during the past months and the fruitful cooperation between GFANZ and the AfDB, expressing his aspiration to achieve more positive results through the participation of the network in the important events to be held in the coming weeks on the way to COP28 in Dubai.
During the meeting, Mohieldin stressed the importance of financing solutions that come from Africa, taking into account work and partnership with external institutions and parties, noting that the finance that can be provided to Africa must be concessional financing that contributes to the implementation of development and climate projects on the continent.
He noted the $4.5bn funding announced by the UAE for climate and development action in Africa, explaining that the GFANZ Africa network will highlight climate and development projects that can benefit from this funding.
The climate champion said that the GFANZ Africa must work to decarbonize some industries in Africa, such as fertilizer and cement industries, and provide the necessary financial and technical support for this, adding that the network must contribute to addressing the challenges faced by African carbon markets and the issue of cross-border carbon trade.
He stated that the network will contribute to developing the capacities of African countries to contribute to the implementation of climate and development action and encourage potential financiers to participate in financing climate and development projects on the continent, explaining that the network will also attract investments and finance for projects resulting from the African Regional Roundtable through cooperation with a number of finance entities, foremost of which is the GCF.
