Empowering African Financial Intermediaries for Climate Action: Insights from RIAFCO Annual Meetings 2024 in Madagascar
From November 25 to 29, 2024, the GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership team joined the CEOs of financial intermediaries from eight African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, the DRC, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal and Togo for the 2024 edition of the Annual Meeting of the African Network of Local Government Financing Institutions (RIAFCO) in Madagascar.
Organized by Madagascar’s Ministry of Decentralization and Regional Planning and the Fonds de Développement Local, the event featured workshops, experience-sharing sessions, and discussions centered on innovative financing mechanisms and climate transition. Under the theme “Together, let’s contribute to the territorial development of Africa and support its climate transition,” the event emphasized the pivotal role of financial intermediaries in mobilizing resources for climate transition in African cities. However, it also highlighted the challenges they face, including a shortage of bankable projects, limited technical capacity, high perceived risks, and regulatory barriers.
Led by Melissa Kerim, Engagement Lead for Sub-Saharan Africa, the GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership organized a session exploring how the City Climate Finance Gap Fund can assist cities and financial intermediaries in overcoming these challenges. This session reinforced the Gap Fund’s commitment to working with national intermediaries to build their capacity on climate change and local climate project preparation, helping them identify climate projects that are robust and aligned with national climate objectives as well as with the Gap Fund’s eligibility criteria.
A collaboration workplan for 2025 was discussed by the GCoM team with the CEOs of the eight African financial intermediaries in attendance. This event adds another layer to the various collaborations initiated by the GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership teams with financial intermediaries in other regions, such as in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, as demonstrated by the recent partnership with the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social in Brazil- BNDES. You can check more information here.