Oritsegbubemi Omatseyin
Lagos — The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group, AfDB, has approved the proposal to take an initial stake of up to $10 million in the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa – Project Development, AGIA-PD, fund.
The AGIA-PD, led by the AfDB, is formed jointly with the African Union Commission, the pan-African investment platform Africa50 and several other partners.
It seeks to help accelerate the continent’s green transition by collaborating with African countries and the private sector, internationally and locally, to prepare and develop resilient, transformative green infrastructure projects and programmes quickly and at scale.
The AGIA will be implemented through three pillars: First is project preparation seeking to raise $100 million in donations upstream for targeted activities while second is project development, using the AGIA-PD mechanism, to raise $400 million in blended capital to transform green infrastructure project concepts into bankable opportunities.
Third is investment and finance that involves establishing a framework to facilitate the mobilisation of $10 billion in funding from treasury stocks, loans, and risk mitigation instruments to provide large-scale funding for green infrastructure projects prepared and developed under pillars one and two.
The AGIA-PD fund will run for 15 years and should reach its capitalisation target in three years. Its blended capital structure combines donations and first- and second-rank treasury stocks for a total of $400 million.
In December 2023, at COP 28 in Dubai, some $175 million in commitments were announced, which included a potential contribution of USD 40 million from the African Development Bank and a commercial investment of $10 million approved by the Bank’s Board of Directors for a current total of around USD 215 million.
