A USD2.415 million grant to support a new African Development Bank (AfDB) initiative to promote environmental and social safeguards in African countries has been approved by the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) Governing Committee during its meeting in Budapest, Hungary on 14 December.

The MCDF grant will fund efforts to raise awareness of AfDB’s updated Integrated Safeguards System (ISS) requirements for ensuring the infrastructure projects it finances are designed, implemented, and monitored in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

The grant will also cover activities to enhance domestic capacity to advance environmental and social (E&S) regulation as well as enabling conditions for E&S safeguard development and compliance with national laws and the standards of AfDB and other International Financial Institutions.

Funding priorities will include regional and country-level E&S training, technical support for E&S policy framework implementation, and an African environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information hub to boost access to performance data and attract ESG finance.

“The pursuit of sustainable development in Africa will require catalytic initiatives that bring sustainability to the fore of investment and development decisions,” said Dr. Issa Maman-Sani, Director of the Environmental and Social Safeguards and Compliance Department at AfDB.

“The proposed sustainability capacity building initiative, with its three-pronged approach of training stakeholders, strengthening regulatory frameworks, and encouraging environmental, social, and governance performance disclosure, is a significant step forward in consolidating the efforts of both sovereign and non-sovereign partners to achieve their sustainability goals,” Dr Maman-Sani concluded.

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