South–South dialogue on access to climate finance

Experts from French-speaking Africa came together to discuss climate financing, with a particular focus on GCF accreditation.

At the start of July, around 50 experts from French-speaking Africa met in Bamako, Mali, at the initiative of two International Climate Initiative (IKI) projects, to participate in training on access to climate finance. Over the two days, the participants – from Benin, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Mali and Senegal – were especially interested in the expertise of Ms Siham Ayad, principal advisor on climate finance to the Moroccan Presidency of COP22.

However, the focus was also on sharing lessons learned on climate finance. The discussions concentrated particularly on the specific obstacles that the countries need to overcome to mobilise funds. These range from language barriers, fragile statehood and an unfavourable investment climate to capacity shortfalls in the countries and difficulties with accessing the data needed to successfully develop project proposals. The second part of the seminar focused on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and included examples of the countries’ experiences. In Senegal, there is already a national accredited entity. In most other countries, however, the institutions have been nominated, but their accreditation is still pending. All the countries already have experience in creating projects with accredited international institutions and are implementing projects.

The participants from the private sector in particular stressed the importance of the training for their work: ‘This seminar was necessary for our own motivation in Mali [...] I learned that there are many opportunities for Mali to obtain financing for adaptation and mitigation [...] I found out for the first time about the different criteria, especially the financial and technical criteria,’ said Amidou Guindo from the Development Bank of Mali, whose views were echoed by various representatives from the other countries involved.

The training seminar was organised by the projects Establishment of a National Competence Centre on Climate Change (4C) from Morocco and Supporting the National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change from Mali. Both projects are financed by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The seminar was the first to be conducted jointly by the two projects as part of South–South cooperation in French-speaking Africa on the various issues surrounding combating and adapting to climate change. Three more seminars are planned for 2018.