FSD Africa, a UK development agency headquartered in Kenya, said it is helping issuers raise at least $1 billion in green and gender-based bonds over the next year to support sustainability projects across the continent.
(Bloomberg) — FSD Africa, a UK development agency headquartered in Kenya, said it is helping issuers raise at least $1 billion in green and gender-based bonds over the next year to support sustainability projects across the continent.
The organization, backed by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, has already supported green and gender bonds that it says have raised $423 million in Africa.
“We want to scale up the work we have been doing supporting green and gender bonds,” Evans Osano, director for capital markets at FSD, said in an interview Wednesday in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. “We want to raise at least a billion dollars in different transactions over the next 12 months,” he said.
While Africa contributes very little of global greenhouse gas emissions, it’s among the worst hit by climate change, yet gets a very small share of the world’s climate finance, according to Osano. The continent receives about $30 billion for climate finance annually, compared to $277 billion that’s required to overcome the challenges each year, he said.
In order to help bridge the funding gap, FSD is providing technical assistance in the form of product development, capacity building and the provision of market infrastructure to bond issuers its partnering, Osano said. He declined to name the issuers because of confidentiality agreements. The funds raised will be deployed to carbon credit, bio-diversity, women-based businesses and infrastructure projects in countries including Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius, he said.
Read: Nigeria’s Lagos Plans 1st Green Bond This Quarter for Projects
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