Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 10, 2018 (ECA) – A high-level policy event on the inclusive green economy and structural transformation in Africa will be held Sunday at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa starting at 2pm.
Linus Mofor, a Senior Environmental Affairs Officer in the ECA's African Climate Policy Centre that is in the Special Initiatives Division, says the event will be held under the theme; leveraging domestic resources to green Africa's infrastructure for resilient economies.
The meeting will allow the Economic Commission for Africa to present the Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility and introduce the concept of "resilience dividend" to participants and how it could be leveraged to mobilize additional finance options for resilient infrastructure development.
Mr. Mofor says the meeting will also seek to identify barriers faced by the public and private sectors in leveraging limited public resources to mobilize transformative finance from domestic resources and FDI for climate-resilient infrastructure development in Africa.
"One of the main objectives of the policy event is to demonstrate and emphasize multiple ways in which investing in climate resilient and resource-efficient infrastructure can create greater public and private value and to discuss innovative approaches to harnessing the resulting resilience dividend as a new source of infrastructure finance," he said.
Participants will explore and debate the possible mix of policy options, legal and regulatory frameworks and governance structures that will stimulate private finance for green technology innovations and resilient infrastructure development, emphasizing options that are successful, scalable and transferrable, and also those options with the potential for transformative impact in the near future.
Organizers expect insights and key policy messages that will inform and influence transformative thinking on creating and supporting an environment conducive to the enhanced leveraging of private sector investment to emerge from the meeting.
This includes investments from domestic and foreign sources necessary for the accelerated development of resilient infrastructure for the transformation of Africa, capitalizing on the opportunities arising from the integration of climate resilience into infrastructure planning and development.
Infrastructure development lies at the heart of the transformation of African economies to meet the continent's development objectives, as set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the continent's development blueprint, Agenda 2063.
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"Those aspirations continue to suffer from a chronic infrastructure deficit, along with poor-quality and expensive infrastructure services, compared with those in other parts of the world and we hope the side event will help come up with solutions to the challenges that face Africa today in this area," said Mr. Mofor.
African ministers of finance and planning and representatives of development partners, development banks and infrastructure project developers, are expected to attend the meeting.
