World Bank Launches Multi-billion Dollar Africa Climate Change Strategy

The Bank’s Next Generation Africa Climate Business Plan aims to train 10 million farmers in climate-smart agriculture, expand landscape management over 60m hectares in 20 countries, increase renewable energy generation capacity from 28GW to 38GW, and equip at least 3O cities with low carbon and compact urban planning. The Bank said that such green growth measures will combat the economic havoc wrought by the pandemic. In response, the new plan – which covers the six years until 2026 – focuses on the broad areas of food security, clean energy, green and resilient cities, environmental stability, and climate shocks. It calls for a proposed Covid-19 financial stimulus package to be ‘greened’, and suggests that countries facing fiscal pressure due to the economic slowdown and low fossil fuel prices could take the opportunity to reduce or better target fossil fuel subsidies. Policymakers will be encouraged to pursue climate-informed macro policies, including green job creation, and build green-resilient infrastructure. In its preliminary pipeline assessment for full year 2021, the Bank says the new plan will support 93 projects with $19.7bn, but that there remains a financing gap of $1bn. The Bank says it supported 346 projects on the continent with funding of over $33bn over the last six years.

SOURCE: AFRICAN BUSINESS MAGAZINE