UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and co-chair for the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) Mark Carney announced on Wednesday the launch of GFANZ Africa to create a regional network that will engage with African financial institutions.
Carney made the announcement during the Egypt- International Cooperation Forum (Egypt-ICF) 2022 in its second edition at the New Administrative Capital.
He hailed the Government of Egypt for convening this important event, Egypt-ICF2022, which aims to deepen cooperation and collaboration for countries across Africa to support the transition to a just, resilient, and low-carbon economy.
Moreover, Carney praised President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and the bold reforms and structural policies that have been enacted by the Government of Egypt to ensure an economic recovery.
“We need to work together to create new ways of mobilizing finance to overcome long-term barriers to achieving sustainable development in Africa, and this will require bold actions by donor governments and multilateral development banks to address the risks that the private sector cannot readily shoulder,” Carney stated.
He emphasized the need for reform in the Bretton Woods system in order to accomplish the global community’s targets for climate finance. This requires the development of well-functioning carbon markets and the inclusion of the private sector in deploying capital and scaling up investment opportunities that are aligned with NetZero commitments.
Carney said that the prospect for reform has been created by the recent commitment of many of the world’s largest financial institutions to manage their collective balance sheets, which total over $130 trillion in line with the Paris agreement.
He also stated that country platforms or innovative platforms like the Egypt Country Platform for NWFE are leading the effort to catalyze climate finance through a multi-stakeholder approach that encourages governments, multilateral development banks and the private sector to provide concessional finance for a just transition in Africa.
“We know that sustainability is about much more than mitigation, something that Egypt’s strategies, policies and actions demonstrate,” he highlighted.
As the official host of the COP27 conference this year, Egypt is determined to attain results on ground and lead the race towards achieving a just green transition in Africa through innovative financing instruments.
Against this context, the Egypt-ICF 2022 and the Meeting of African Ministers of Economy, Finance and Environment, will both a platform for governments, multilateral and bilateral development partners, philanthropic foundations, private sector, think tanks and civil society to consider the challenges the continent is offset by and explore avenues to overcome them.
