The Government of Flanders has committed €1m to support projects in three African countries, namely, they are Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa. Simon Calcoen, Policy Officer at the Flanders Department of Foreign Affairs, said: “The Government of Flanders looks forward to continuing their cooperation on climate change adaptation in Africa.” The commitments were made in May 2019. The new contribution follows an initial grant of two million euros to the ACCF in November 2016 by the Flanders government, bringing the total contribution to the ACCF to 11.4 million euros. Since 2017, the ACCF has supported African countries in their process to transition towards climate-resilient and low-carbon development through a portfolio of on-going projects. In the near future, ACCF aims to secure new funding contributions and scale up its climate finance support to enable African countries to achieve the ambitious objectives set out in their Nationally Determined Contributions.
In a statement, the African Development Bank noted that in Malawi, the project will contribute to the demonstration of an innovative results-based finance model for adaptation to climate change. The project will be implemented by the Climate Change and Green Growth Department of the African Development Bank. Furthermore, in Mozambique, the grant will support two projects on unlocking blended finance for young entrepreneurs for resilient blue-green growth in the country and promoting agriculture as a strategy to foster climate adaptation and recovery of vulnerable communities living in degraded marine and coastal ecosystems in Zambezia. The two projects will be implemented by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Institute of International Economic Cooperation.
In South Africa, the projects seek to support ecosystem-based adaptation and financing for livestock farmers within South Africa’s threatened grasslands as well as innovative access modality for the Green Climate Fund and will be completed by the Birdlife South Africa and South South-North. South African Deputy Minister of Environmental, Forestry & Fisheries, Makhatso Magdeline Sotyu noted that “For the past five years, we have seen changes in the climate change that we have never seen before and we are the only ones who can save our planet”
