Africa gets new fund for climate change projects

By STANDARD REPORTER

Kenya: African Development Bank (AfDB) has created a key fund to tackle the growing vagaries of climate change on the continent.

Directors of the bank approved the creation of the Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF), a bilateral thematic trust fund to support African countries in their transition to climate-resilient and low-carbon development last week.

The bank will host and manage the fund, created with a 4.7 million euro (Sh564m) contribution from Germany, for an initial three-year period. The aim is to scale up to a multi-donor trust fund as soon as at least one new donor commits to join.

Kenya, like other African counties faces the vagaries of climate change resulting in erratic rains, floods and drought. Besides, the country is currently ill-prepared to access international financing to deal with the effects of climate change.

Future ACCF grant recipients will include African governments, NGOs, research and regional institutions, and grants will be executed either by the recipients themselves or by the bank on their behalf.

AfDB’s Director of Energy, Environment and Climate Change Department and Chairman of the Climate Change Co-ordination Committee, Alex Rugamba, termed ACCF critical for African countries.

“Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the impacts of climate change, yet the region receives a very small share of climate finance compared to other continents,” he said in a statement.

Mr Rugamba further noted that it is the responsibility of the institution to help African countries access international climate finance to support their transition towards climate smart development.

“This fund will help facilitate countries’ access to the financing they need to protect their economies and environmental assets in the face of climate change,” he noted.

Climate finance

“There is a great opportunity for the bank to catalyse and channel more climate finance to Africa,” he said.

The fund seeks to generate transformational change in the medium to long term, with specific areas of intervention including climate finance readiness, climate change and green growth mainstreaming, preparation and financing of adaptation and mitigation projects.

Others include knowledge management and information sharing related to climate change, capacity building, preparation of climate resilient and low carbon strategies and policies.

The first call of proposals is expected to take place within the next two months, and will focus on climate finance readiness.

In line with AfDB’s strategy for mobilising additional resources, the ACCF will complement the institution’s own resources as well as the multilateral funds for which the bank is an implementing agency.

The bank is progressively mainstreaming climate change mitigation and adaptation into its development activities. In addition, its 2013-2022 strategy places emphasis on promoting transition to green growth.