Funding Options for African Countries hit by Climate Change: ACCF

The debate around climate change often focuses on the targets that need to be achieved. Another aspect of the discussion is increasingly gaining attention; that is the funding required, for African countries in particular, where climate change has hit the hardest.

The Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF) recently convened an event titled “Supporting African countries to unlock and absorb climate adaptation finance” at the 25th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25) in Madrid, Spain.

A panel discussion of climate experts provided an opportunity to raise awareness of the ACCF among stakeholders at an international level. The event, moderated by the African Development Bank’s Manager of Climate Finance, Gareth Phillips, aimed to showcase the ACCF’s work to support African countries in unlocking and absorbing climate adaptation finance through a pipeline of 15 projects.

Phillips provided an overview of the ACCF, a USD 15.3 million trust fund with contributions from Germany, Italy, and Flanders, which provides grants to African governments and non-governmental organizations to scale up access to climate finance and pilot adaptation initiatives in line with Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

Phillips cited the fund’s current portfolio of eight projects, six national (Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mali, Eswatini and Zanzibar) and two regional.

He said the projects aimed to support beneficiary countries to implement small-scale adaptation initiatives and to access international climate funds. This is by supporting the development of project proposals for submission to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and by building capacities of national experts on proposal writing, project management and/or resource mobilisation. These projects also support the accreditation process of national institutions to the GCF.

Phillips also introduced new projects approved by the ACCF and presented funding needs to satisfy the fast-growing demand of African countries.

Lassina Coulibaly, coordinator of the ACCF’s project on supporting the transition to a climate-resilient green economy in Mali, said: “The development of a national environment finance strategy is critical to boosting the country’s resource mobilisation efforts and a portfolio of five projects for consideration by the private sector.”

Balgis Osman, climate change expert at the African Development Bank, shared the experience of the regional project to enhance access to information in Africa through 25 country climate change profiles. Osman indicated that, “With this project, we are helping African countries to get climate information.”

Aissata Boubou, head of the climate finance unit at the Centre de Suivi écologique in Senegal gave an overview of the ACCF’s efforts to support south-south cooperation through a Community of Practice of Direct Access Entities, which is a joint government and civil society initiative to enable sharing of best practices around accessing international climate finance.

Clifford Polycarp from GCF presented the partnership opportunities with the GCF to enable African countries to mobilize resources to implement their climate change projects outlined in their Nationally Determined Contributions.