Project: Grant to the African Climate Change Fund
Beneficiary: African climate Change fund
period: 2017-2018
Amount: 2.000.000 euro
According a study by Climate Policy Initiative in 2013-2014, only 3% of global climate funding went to Sub Saharan Africa. This contrasts with the finding that Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest contribution to climate change, but with the highest vulnerability to climate change impacts. It is known that these countries find it more difficult to raise climate finance. A privileged witness from a developing country described the current catch 22 as follows: "We can not access climate finance if we are not ready, but how can we be ready if we can not access finance?"
By working with the African Climate Change Fund of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Flanders wants to contribute to unblocking the current tension between needs and available financing in Africa. This is possible by providing technical assistance to 'prepare' African countries for public climate finance and private investment climate, which allows them to raise funds. A relatively small investment in technical assistance can lead African countries gain access to millions of dollars from private and public climate funds. The resources should allow African countries and investment policies to match the increasing climate challenges on the continent.
This project represents the Flemish efforts agreed within the intra-Belgian climate burden sharing. Herein Flanders undertakes to commit annually 14.5 million euro in the period from 2016 to 2020 for international climate finance.