The African Development Bank (AfDB) approved the conversion of the Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF) into a multidonor trust fund last month.

This conversion brings two new partners to the fund, the governments of Italy and Flanders, Belgium, which are contributing €4.7-million and €2-million respectively. The conversion also allows for new partnerships with other donors interested in supporting African countries in their transition to climate-resilient development and green growth.

The ACCF was established in April 2014 with a €4.725-million contribution from Germany to scale up climate-smart development in African countries by increasing the mobilisation of international climate finance.

ACCF founding donor the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) expressed pride that the fund, which was established with the vision of eventually attracting other donors, has achieved this milestone. BMZ also indicated its gratitude to the German Development Agency for executing the agreement on its behalf.

“The ACCF plays an important role in supporting African countries to scale up their access to climate finance to advance the ambitious targets they have set in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs),” AfDB Climate Change and Green Growth Department director Anthony Nyong remarked in a press statement released last month.

He added that the contributions of Italy and Flanders were testament to the good work that the fund had done so far, and the potential to scale it up. “The partnership with our donors will be instrumental in scaling up the bank’s climate finance to advance climate-resilient, low-carbon development across the continent.”

Only 3% of the global climate finance currently flows to sub-Saharan Africa, according to data from the ‘Global Landscape of Climate Finances 2015’ report, published in November 2015 by the Climate Policy Initiative. This is despite the region being the most vulnerable to climate change.

However, Flanders Department of Foreign Affairs official Simon Calcoen stated that “the government of Flanders is convinced that the ACCF is key to resolving the current tension between unmet climate needs in Africa and available international climate finance”.

The ACCF currently has eight projects under implementation. These are supporting six African countries – Mali, Swaziland, Kenya, Cabo Verde, Zanzibar and Côte d’Ivoire – to strengthen the capacity of their institutions to access and manage climate finance and develop impactful projects and programmes that will attract the finance from the Green Climate Fund and other sources.

Further, two regional projects are supporting access to updated climate information and building resilience of transboundary infrastructure projects. The ACCF is also actively engaged in promoting coordination, partnerships, knowledge exchange and learning around climate finance readiness.

The fund also plans to launch a new call for proposals to attract new and innovative projects in support of African countries’ INDCs.