Readiness for Climate Finance: Experiences from Eastern and Southern Africa

Combating climate change in sub-Saharan Africa will require tremendous effort and ingenuity. To act effectively, resources will have to be mobilised at scale, their delivery coordinated through a combination of policy and finance instruments, and their leverage maximized on much larger amounts of public and private investments to catalyse climate-smart development. At the same time, it will be important to mobilise and deliver climate finance resources in a way that complements (rather than erodes) development policy and finance, in order to sustain and further development gains in a changing climate.

It is also crucial to recognise that maximizing the impact of climate funds takes more than finance. Institutional capacities and regulatory frameworks also play a key role in attracting climate finance, facilitating the mobilization of public and private resources, and enhancing the sustainability of development outcomes. Accordingly, for Sub-Saharan Africa, such readiness actions will help create the demand for financing from a strong pipeline of bankable climate and development-smart projects and programmes, and will enhance the availability of both public and private financing for climate action.

On behalf of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa, adelphi and its partner OneWorld are preparing a study as part of a series of publications by UNDP. The study will focus on the state of climate change finance readiness in six African countries, namely Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Lesotho, Ethiopia and Mozambique. It will provide a better understanding of the governance of climate change finance at national level and extract lessons-learned regarding the governance of climate change finance to inform policymakers in the region.