AfDB Pledges $25bn to Climate Finance

Nume Ekeghe

The African Development Bank (AfDB) will double its climate finance commitment for the period 2020-2025, the Bank’s President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina announced Thursday.

He said the Bank would commit at least $25 billion towards climate finance.

Speaking at a plenary in the presence of heads of states at the One Planet Summit taking place in Nairobi, Adesina also announced the Bank was on course to achieve its target of allocating 40 per cent of its funding to climate finance by 2020, a year ahead.

The Bank’s commitment on the target, the highest among all multilateral development banks, had progressed steadily from nine per cent in 2016 to 28 per cent in 2017 and 32 per cent in 2018.

Considering Africa’s high vulnerability despite contributing the least to climate change, the African Development Bank has successfully raised its adaptation finance from less than 30 per cent of total climate finance to parity with mitigation in 2018.

Adesina said: “The required level of financing is only feasible with the direct involvement of the entire financial sector. Consequently, the Bank launched the African Financial Alliance for Climate Change (AFAC) to link all stock exchanges, pension and sovereign wealth funds, central Banks and other financial institutions of Africa to mobilise and incentivise the shift of their portfolios towards low carbon and climate resilient investments.”