ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, February 15, 2024 -/African Media Agency (AMA)/-The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group approved, on January 24, 2024 in Abidjan, the proposal for a first take of capital participation of up to ten million US dollars in the project called “Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa – Project Development Fund” (AGIA-PD).
A component of the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa (AGIA), the AGIA-PD fund is a ten billion dollar initiative, led by the Bank and created jointly with the African Union Commission, the pan-African platform for Africa50 investment and several other partners. The objective is to help accelerate the continent’s green transition by collaborating with African countries and the international and local private sector, to prepare and develop transformative green and resilient infrastructure projects and programs very quickly and on a large scale.
To achieve its objectives, AGIA will be implemented through three pillars, the first of which is project preparation, aiming to mobilize $100 million in donations for targeted activities, upstream. The second pillar, with AGIA-PD as its instrument, is project development, aiming to mobilize $400 million in mixed capital to transform green infrastructure project concepts into bankable opportunities. Finally, the third pillar, Investment and Financing, consists of establishing a framework to facilitate the mobilization of ten billion dollars of financing (equity, loans and risk mitigation instruments) to enable large-scale financing of projects green infrastructure prepared and developed within the framework of the first two pillars.
The AGIA-PD fund, with a maturity of 15 years, has a mixed capital structure combining donations and first and second tier equity for a total amount of $400 million, and its capitalization objective should be reached in three years. Last December, during COP 28 in Dubai, some US$175 million in commitments were announced to the initiative, including a potential contribution of US$40 million from the African Development Bank, including ten million dollar commercial investment approved by the Bank’s Board of Directors. This amount today stands at approximately $215 million.
Investors targeted by AGIA-PD include multilateral development banks, impact funds, government agencies, sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors, regional and non-regional, commercial investors as well as philanthropists.
“AGIA-PD is a strategic investment, co-made by the Bank, to transform, quickly and at scale, concepts into bankable green infrastructure projects. It will invest in the development of green infrastructure projects with a view to financial return and development impact. It will leverage the private sector to develop transformative, green and resilient projects that will sustainably close Africa’s infrastructure gap,” said Solomon Quaynor, Vice President of the African Development Bank Group, responsible for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization.
“AGIA’s vision is to accelerate the deployment of transformative green infrastructure projects, by creating a solid partnership framework between the different stakeholders and by targeting the entire ecosystem of project preparation, development and financing. green infrastructure, including both emerging and established players. The ultimate objective is to accelerate the continent’s green transition, while drastically reducing the infrastructure deficit,” said Amadou Hott, special envoy of the President of the African Development Bank Group, Akinwumi Adesina, and global ambassador for the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa.
AGIA-PD target sectors and investments in climate change mitigation projects are aligned with the Nationally Determined Contributions of the beneficiary countries, as well as the Bank’s High 5 strategic priorities (“Enlighten the ‘Africa and powering it’, ‘Feeding Africa’, ‘Industrialising Africa’, ‘Integrating Africa’ and ‘Improving the quality of life of African populations’) and on the Climate Change Framework and of the Bank’s green growth 2021-2030.
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) for the African Development Bank.
Source : African Media Agency (AMA)
2024-02-15 11:27:34
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