The Southern Africa Climate Finance Partnership (SACFP) seeks to develop a regional partnership between six countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to support country-owned and managed climate finance portfolios that can be financed through the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other climate finance avenues, and mobilise private investment where possible. The objective of the project is to contribute to shared lessons and experiences of Nationally Designated Authorities (NDAs) to the GCF, in meeting the requirements and emerging operational procedures of the GCF. It is anticipated that this will contribute to increasing Southern African countries access to much needed climate finance.

The GCF is the largest multilateral fund with a UNFCCC mandate. However, it is just one part of the varied and growing climate finance landscape, and it is currently constrained by a lack of impactful and fundable proposals in its pipeline, with limited cases of coordinated national portfolios that include transformative development pathways at the scale required to address climate change. Stakeholders – including GCF Nationally Designated Authorities and Accredited Entities – face challenges when sequencing and activating transformative project portfolios. The quality, scale, and coordination of project portfolios should be addressed through:

• A systematic, coordinated approach by developing countries accessing the GCF and other climate finance; and
• Partnership, collaboration, learning, and ultimately enhanced capability to coordinate transformative investments.

Funded by the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development (UK DFID), the first phase of the project (July 2016 to March 2017) provided support to Namibia, Zambia and South Africa to engage and test the approach. The second phase builds on the first by enhancing dynamic learning across target countries, provides more tailored approaches (such as country bilateral exchanges) to address the requests of countries and expands the number of countries that are participating. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and UK DIFD are providing resources for the technical support provided by the SACFP.

For a list of helpful resources for climate finance practitioners go here.