The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (AfDF), the concessional financing window of the African Development Bank Group, has approved a $4.23 million grant for the second phase of a project to integrate natural capital into development financing in Africa.
The project covers 13 countries: Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The initiative will also receive in-kind contributions from partner organisations, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the German public agency for international cooperation on sustainable development (GIZ), the African Union Development Agency–New Partnership for Africa's Development, the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Environment Programme.
Participating countries will also contribute to the project.
Scheduled for implementation between October 2026 and September 2029, the project aims to generate policy, statistical, institutional and knowledge-based outputs to support the integration of natural capital into development planning.
According to the African Development Bank Group, the project seeks to strengthen policy-making systems, statistical systems, institutional frameworks and knowledge-generation mechanisms needed to assess natural capital and incorporate it into public policy.
The programme will deliver policy support, technical assistance, statistical readiness assessments, biodiversity financing tools, pilot projects to assess green wealth, capacity building and peer learning.
"This project is intended to contribute to development that is resilient to the effects of climate change, nature-friendly, and inclusive, by enabling African countries to better identify, measure, and manage their natural wealth, while strengthening the evidence base that informs development financing, dialogue on sovereign policies, and the mobilization of green investments," said Innocent Onah, Chief Natural Resources Officer at the African Development Bank Group.
He added that, over the long term, the project could contribute to improvements in gross domestic product growth, foreign direct investment inflows, economic development, poverty reduction, employment, economic competitiveness, and financial and economic risk ratings in the participating countries.
