More climate financing from AfDB, next four year plan will be ambitious

19th October 2016 By: African News Agency

More climate financing from AfDB, next four year plan will be ambitious

Photo by: Reuters

The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Tuesday, announced that its annual climate financing will triple to $5-billion dollars a year by 2020, which will increase its total new investments to 40% by 2020.

This was announced at the sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-VI) which is held in United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa.

The Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan for the period of 2016-2020 will be more ambitious, said Kapi Kapoor, the acting VP for sector operations of the AfDB.

According to him, it would explore modalities for achieving the adaptation goal, the adequacy and effectiveness of climate finance, capacity building and technology transfer — building technical skills so that African economies can realise their full potential for adaptation in high-technology sectors.

The Bank through the Inter-Governmental Authority Development (IGAD) had supported the Drought Resilience Program in the Horn of Africa.

In the first phase, 125-million dollars was approved for Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya to implement measures to alleviate the negative impact caused by the deteriorating environmental conditions in the Horn of Africa.

The Bank similarly approved 231-million dollars to finance the Climate Resilience Program in the Sahel through the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel. Recently, the bank also approved over 500-million dollars to support the fight against the effects of the El-Nino that hit many parts of Eastern and Southern Africa.

In addition, through projects financed by the bank, environmental protection and climate mitigation and adaptation activities are mainstreamed into national development along providing solidarity emergency relief funds for countries affected by various natural disasters, Kapoor added.

“Working through partnerships with banks and insurance providers across Africa, the bank aims to bring greater access of insurance and risk financing in order to leverage lending for agriculture to the tune of one billion dollars,” he said.

“We understand that this cannot happen unless the insurance and finance providers have access to reliable and quality climate and weather information that allows them to calibrate their risk models and design appropriate insurance and lending packages for agriculture.”

According to him, the Feed Africa initiative aimed to drive agricultural transformation through 15 priority commodity value chains in given agro-ecological zones specifically to achieve self-sufficiency in key commodities such as rice, wheat, fish, palm oil, horticulture and cassava across Africa.

“Because we know drought risk is associated with seasonal variability in these agricultural zones, it will be important for the bank transformation program to tap into the network of climate and weather observation systems in order to apply climate information to better plan crop production cycles and develop weather index-based insurance schemes to protect investments in agriculture,” he said.

The AfDB has committed almost $7-billion dollars to support climate-resilient and low-carbon development in Africa in the past four years. Its energy investments last year delivered power that is 90% generated from renewable sources.

The AfDB also supports the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative and the Africa Adaptation Initiative, both endorsed by the African Union heads of State and government.