Opening Remarks

Discussion with Development Partners and Private Sector.

The session will bring together the concerned development partners, entrepreneurs, and climate activists to voice their input and share innovative solutions as well as their experience with addressing environmental issues such as disaster risk mitigation instruments.

It will focus on the power of innovation in influencing the climate agenda and shifting productive patterns to complement and enhance mitigation efforts.

Africa’s vulnerability to supply chain disruptions that impact on its food security has been laid bare both by the COVID19 pandemic as well as the conflict in Europe. Investing in climate-smart African agriculture at its multiple levels of value and leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area can help safeguard the continent’s natural heritage and create sustainable value chains.

In light of Egypt hosting COP27 this year, the presidency announced that its main objective is to move from pledges to implementation. This panel aims to highlight the role of the different stakeholders in translating financial commitments into implementable projects, capitalizing on the needed interplay between them, to promote an actionable climate agenda, whilst ensuring environmental sustainability as well as decent work, social inclusion, and poverty eradication.

Considering the notion of country ownership and motivated by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, this session will serve as a platform to elevate the voice of Africa on climate change. The panel aims to highlight the technical and financial needs of African countries to develop and align their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with long-term national development and investment plans.

Liquidity constraints remain some of the foremost barriers to allow African countries to invest towards climate resilience and the SDGs. To unlock the financing required, the cost of access to market based sustainable finance nees to be lowered, and this green borrowing needs ot be explicitly linked to climate resilience. The panel will consider a Sustainability-Linked Sovereign Debt Hub in process of being established to support the transformation of debt markets through the development of nature and climate performance-linked sovereign debt. The hub intends to enhance resilience to emerging risks, reduce the cost of borrowing to sovereign debtors who make conscious investments that yield sustainable development outcomes, and establish innovations that allow sovereign debt markets to be suited to a world of external shocks. The session will also examine other tools for reducing the cost of green borrowing including for example the issuance of full or partial risk guarantees, first loss equity among other risk mitigation forms. Successful projects which have benefited from such tools should be showcased and used as a model for additional funding. The panel will also consider the technical assistance requirements of African countries.

Following the impact of the COVID19 pandemic and continued macro-economic instability linked to global events, 15 African countries are at risk of external and public debt distress, and 6 already facing debt distress. Despite these challenges, African countries have made significant strides to ensure the transparency of their operations on capital markets and also to provide reliable investment opportunities. As such official debt for sustainable investment swaps swaps are primarily aimed as a tool to generate additional investment and liquidity for climate resilience, rather than a tool for restructuring. Channeling new financial resources into climate resilience can be achieved by addressing the high cost of some of the existing debt of African countries and refinancing it on more affordable terms, with key performance indicators.  The meeting will explore performance-linked sovereign debt refinancing to channel investment that contributes to  supporting ambitious action on climate and nature as well as other aspects of sustainability, given the urgent need to address food, energy, and water security and making sovereign debt markets responsive to climate change and nature restoration.  Examples of debt swaps will be considered, while opportunities to link debt restructuring and new financing in th blue economy will be examined in the context of Africa’s Great Blue Wall Initiative.

In light of Egypt hosting COP27 this year, the presidency announced that its main objective is to move from pledges to implementation. It is within this context that the ‘Sharm El-Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing’ aims to highlight the role of the different stakeholders, capitalizing on the needed interplay between them, to promote an actionable agenda for climate action that would be applicable to developing and emerging economies at large.

This workshop aims to present the preliminary findings of the Guidebook and spur discussions around the key policy recommendations for climate action.

The philanthropic community will have an opportunity to engage with the COP27 presidency on its strategic priorities for the upcoming COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh. The roundtable shall include a dedicated discussion to headline presidential initiatives, where enhanced philanthropic support is needed, will be showcased.

The adoption of green fiscal policies and macro-prudential regulation and climate related stress testing can help African countries to be better prepared to face climate change.

This discussion shall shed light on the vital role of effective fiscal policies in accelerating economic development while furthering environmental and social objectives.

The workshop aims to discuss the way forward for development cooperation, in the presence of governments, development partners and the private sector to ensure the workforce receives the adequate training and education to match the required skills necessary to cope with the green transition.

This workshop aims to explore how to leverage the continent’s competitiveness through the utilization of current capacities to produce in-house green goods and services, and to develop sustainable value chains within the AfCFTA context. It will bring together government officials, development partners and private sector representatives, to share their experiences in promoting localization of production, highlight potential solutions to address the varying trade mix, and the way forward.

The workshop aims to explore ways of attracting and mobilizing more funds from the private sector especially in the fields of wastewater management, desalination plants, as main areas of the climate adaptation process.

The Finance Day is an annual event held during COP with the objective of mobilizing public and private resources to support countries that are most vulnerable to climate change and help them adapt to the impacts of climate change and build their resilience to future climate events.

Tackling climate change requires going beyond traditional financing approaches and sources to meet the challenge at scale: at a global and grassroots level. In this context, the main objective of this panel is to exchange insights about innovative mechanisms and instruments to provide suitable financing for projects related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Innovative financing models aim to unify the efforts of all the relevant stakeholders such as Governments, the private sector and civil society organizations, and philanthropies among others. Therefore, blended finance and debt swap agreements to implement green projects are among the key tools for innovative climate financing. The discussion will therefore focus on how to create enabling environments, and incentives to confidently invest in emerging economies in order to contribute to de-risking private investments in climate action.

In the face of rapid demographic growth and acute development challenges, meeting Africa’s infrastructure needs is more urgent than ever. Investing in sustainable infrastructure can help deliver a just transition that promotes inclusive growth, better access to services and well-being, while also building community resilience and ensuring that costs and benefits of the low-carbon transition are shared evenly across and within societies. Yet, existing national planning frameworks and infrastructure business models have not produced sufficient volumes of ready-to-go bankable projects capable of attracting the required investment to meet Africa’s development needs. In advance of COP27, this workshop will bring together African policymakers and international infrastructure practitioners to discuss how multilateral stakeholder engagement can leverage improved project planning and preparation to build robust pipelines of sustainable infrastructure projects at the scale and pace required to meet the continent’s development needs, alongside global climate objectives.

Discussion with Development Partners and Private Sector

Although the last few decades have witnessed progress on the gender equality front with improved access to education, leadership positions, and gender equality laws and legislations, climate change exposes women, especially those living in developing communities, to the risk of rising inequalities. The workshop therefore aims to discuss the importance of mainstreaming women empowerment into all socio-economic aspects from decision-making to access to economic opportunities, to ensure the delivery of equitable, effective and efficient support mechanisms that take women’s needs and priorities into consideration.

Fair sovereign rating, pricing strategy, investor allocation, market liquidity, and ongoing information disclosure are critical factors when leveraging resources from the international capital markets at reasonable rates. This workshop aims to facilitate dialogue between countries and rating agencies, and help countries better understand the methodologies, requirements, and considerations (including ESG criteria) in a sovereign rating process. In addition, market overview and country experience will be shared for green and sustainable bond issuance. For secondary market liquidity, the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility provides a repo mechanism that countries can apply to lower the cost and incentivize green and sustainability-linked investments. ESG criteria can often place significant reporting burdens on developing countries seeking to use market-based opportunities to be able to raise finance for investment in climate resilience.

Closing Remarks and Announcement of Communiqué.

This two-day workshop aims to bring together diverse stakeholders from African countries to facilitate South-South learning on accelerating private sector engagement in climate adaptation and resilience action, with a particular focus on agriculture, water, and energy.

Day1
12:00 pm ─ 06:00 pm

Day2
9:30 am ─ 05:00 pm

The knowledge building sessions aim to provide senior staff members at African Ministries of Finance, Economy & Environment with the necessary knowledge on the strategic use of blended finance to mobilize private investment in SDG and climate projects in their countries.

Day 2
HOW BLENDED FINANCE MOBILIZES PRIVATE INVESTMENT TO ACHIEVE THE SDGS

9:00 am ─ 10:00 am

BLENDED FINANCE TO MOBILIZE PRIVATE INVESTMENT TO CLIMATE PROJECTS

10:00 am ─ 11:00 am

BLENDED FINANCE TO MOBILIZE PRIVATE INVESTMENT TO HIGH PRIORITY PROJECTS IN AFRICA

03:30 pm ─ 04:30 pm

UNDESA will lead a capacity development workshop to support African countries in leveraging their enablers of effective development cooperation, especially their National Development Cooperation Policies, to enhance support by development partners for climate adaptation needs. Building on the insights of the DCF survey findings and against the backdrop of the two-year Glasgow-Sharm-el-Sheikh work programme, workshop will aim to: Discuss broader Africa-specific survey insights on making development cooperation more agile, risk-informed and effective; Engage participants in interactive peer-learning and knowledge sharing activities, on how their NDCPs have integrated climate adaptation priorities, opportunities for improvement and how they can be leveraged for more effective support from development partners; Explore specific effective practices of the other enablers, such as Country Results Frameworks, Development Cooperation Information Systems (DCIS) and National Development Cooperation Forums (NDCFs); and Identify specific actions for participants to take in their country contexts toward integrating climate adaptation into their development cooperation policies and practices.

Day1
10:30 am ─ 05:00 pm

Day2
11:00 am ─ 4:00 pm