A journey to reform the global climate finance architecture for African countries

The Africa Climate Finance National Designated Authorities Network (AfDAN) is the newest entity on the African continent, with the potential to reduce reliance on commercial and concessional loans from the global climate financing system. Only time will tell how effective this will be.

AfDAN will coordinate the mobilization of climate funds for member countries in an effort to rescue economies burdened by public debts resulting from climate finance loans.

The Africa Green Finance Initiative is partnering with Building Climate Resilience with the Urban Poor (BCRUP), a program designed to address the impacts of climate change in African cities.

 BCRUP focuses on implementing climate action in urban areas, specifically aiming to alleviate the effects of climate change on the urban poor. This initiative is aligned with Africa Agenda 2063, which envisions a prosperous and climate-resilient continent, and the African Union's climate and resilience agenda.

Both the Green Finance Network and the Urban Poor Climate Action Program aim to empower African countries that are lagging in implementing climate action programs at both the urban and grassroots levels.

Kenya's Financing Locally Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) program serves as a model for other countries in executing grassroots climate action initiatives.

The Africa Green Financing Network was established by African heads of state during COP 27 in Egypt and placed at the centre of Africa's climate finance mobilization efforts. Its mission is to unite African nations and streamline access to climate resilience funds at a predictable and sustainable scale for adaptive capacity building.

Barely a month after AfDAN and BCRUP focal points, along with other stakeholders, met in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss scaling up climate finance mobilization and building resilience for the urban poor, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) announced the adoption of a regional support and delivery model. This model fully integrates operations to support ambitious country programs, accelerate implementation, and enhance impact.

“Drawing on a decade of programming lessons, the GCF has adopted a regional model of support and delivery that fully integrates operations aimed at supporting ambitious country programs and investments, accelerating implementation, and enhancing impact."

"Led by a restructured senior management team, the GCF will move forward guided by four key principles: strengthened country ownership, a greater focus on results and impact, an optimized corporate structure for larger scale and efficiency, and a fit-for-purpose approach to talent acquisition and retention,” the GCF shared on its X (formerly Twitter) account.

The GCF is one of the leading global climate funds and serves as an operating entity of the financial mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).