Africa Green Finance Coalition (AGFC)

By 2030, African nations need to invest $3 trillion to tackle their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for climate change priorities. Domestic and international public and private climate finance needs to be mobilised at scale and fast.

The Africa Green Finance Coalition is a new initiative designed to fast-track African economies’ political will and efforts to mobilise and invest large volumes of green investment. The AGFC platform will enable African governments to pool resources, share learning and create a pathway for increased domestic and international flows of green investment capital to the continent.

Aiming for a formal launch at COP27 in Egypt, the AGFC platform will enable African governments to collaborate in designing future-proof climate finance regulations, policies, incentives, institutions and investment portfolios at scale.

Africa Pensions Supervisors’ Network Programme

Africa’s pension assets represent less than 1% of global assets, with a pension coverage of only 9.6%, putting a significant percentage of the elderly at risk of old age poverty.

The Programme aims to support holistic interventions that will ultimately encourage long-term (retirement) savings and create facilitative policy, regulatory and industry environment to support appropriate deployment and investment of the pension assets into the real sector. The Programme will convene pension sector actors across Africa to resolve common challenges in SSA’ pensions sector.

The interventions will ultimately encourage long-term savings, appropriate deployment, and investment of pension assets. The initiative also aims to increase pension literacy and awareness of retirement products and investments.

Africa Private Equity and Debt Programme

A pan-Africa programme that aims to support the development of private capital markets in Africa to complement public markets.

The programme’s overarching goal is to improve the availability of long-term financing for priority social and economic sectors in Africa by mobilising private equity and debt capital. Overall, the programme seeks to increase local institutional (particularly pension fund) investor participation in private equity and debt in the continent to complement development finance institutions’ financing.

The programme aims to achieve this through:

• Creating a facilitative enabling environment by working with regulators to put in place regulations and policies to enable private equity and debt investments by relevant institutional investors;
• Working with market participants on demonstration transactions that provide an avenue or vehicle for such investments
• Capacity and knowledge development of relevant stakeholders, research, advocacy and impact reporting.

Africa Regulatory Support Programme

The capacity of key institutions such as ministries of finance, central banks and capital market authorities to develop, monitor and enforce financial policies and regulations is critical to developing robust, competitive and ultimately poverty-reducing capital markets. However, many of Africa’s regulators grapple with inadequate financing and human resource capacity gaps, resulting in outdated regulatory and supervision technologies and frameworks. These challenges hinder the development of African capital markets to facilitate efficient allocation of long-term capital. To address these challenges, ARSP extends technical assistance to regional securities regulators on: capacity assessment and strengthening, development of capital market development masterplans and strategic plans, regulatory frameworks for collective investment schemes, Islamic capital market products, and knowledge management products on listings and sustainability-related disclosures.

Climate Finance Training Programme

Establish a twinning arrangement between the UK and Kenyan/East African/African academic institutions to provide climate finance training to develop the capacity of local and regional policymakers, academia, regulators and financial market participants.

Ethiopia Central Securities Depository (CSD) System

This Project aims to support the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) in acquiring and implementing a Central Securities Depository and Settlement (CSD) System. NBE will initially utilise the CSD system for government securities, with the ability for the system to be scaled for corporate debt securities, equities, and funds.

The CSD will ensure the safe custody of securities, ensure accurate record-keeping and reporting, reduce transaction costs, minimise risk, improve efficiency in the transfer of securities, facilitate the implementation of corporate actions, and improve the integrity of transactions. The CSD will promote increased liquidity and turnover in securities markets, increase transparency, and enhance investor confidence. An efficient and effective capital market will attract diverse investors, including foreign investors, increasing the volume and diversity of trades in Ethiopia’s capital markets.

Ethiopia Licensing Framework

This project aims to develop a policy and regulatory framework for the licensing and regulation of capital market service providers and self-regulatory organisations in Ethiopia.