European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer today participated in the Africa Adaptation Summit (https://bit.ly/3cLVftr) in Rotterdam. Organised by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), the summit brought together leaders from government, the United Nations, and business for the first-ever global summit to focus solely on accelerating climate adaptation in Africa.

President Hoyer opened the leader’s roundtable of the conference to present the investment challenges to increase adaptation finance in Africa and outlined how the EIB can support adaptation projects. You can read his speech here (https://bit.ly/3QhFAQ8).

EIB President Werner Hoyer commented: “Climate Change could wipe out 15% of Africa’s gross domestic product by 2030, which would mean an additional 100 million people in extreme poverty by the end of the decade. A scenario that is particularly unfair towards a continent that has contributed only marginally to climate change. The EIB has been a strong partner of African countries for more than 55 years. Through our new development arm EIB Global we are strengthening our presence in Africa and are mobilising private capital at scale for innovative green technologies, such as green hydrogen. We will use this experience to build new partnerships to unlock private finance for adaptation projects, including under the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program.”

Partnership with Global Center on Adaptation

In September 2021, the EIB and GCA agreed a partnership (https://bit.ly/3BoMmj7) to mobilise action in regions of the world that are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as the African continent, where the EIB and GCA collaborate on the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) (https://bit.ly/3cIRIfv), an initiative developed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) (https://bit.ly/3RkYNlg) and GCA to scale up adaptation action in Africa by mobilising $25 billion.

The EIB and GCA are working closely with the AfDB and other multilateral development banks, as well as international financial institutions, with the goal of providing financing for projects that fall under the AAAP’s pillars. These include infrastructure resilience, youth empowerment through jobs and entrepreneurship and climate-smart digital technologies for agriculture and food security.

Supporting climate adaptation across Africa

Over the last five years the EIB has provided €18 billion for public and private investment across Africa. This includes working with African and international partners to strengthen drinking water and wastewater treatment in cities throughout the continent including Bamako, Cairo, Dakar, Kigali, Niamey, Ouagadougou and Tunis, enabling smallholder farmers to adapt agriculture to a changing climate and strengthen measures to reduce land degradation.

EIB Climate Adaptation Plan

The EIB Climate Adaptation Plan (https://bit.ly/3Qk5Qcy) supports the objectives of the EU Adaptation Strategy inside and outside the European Union. The EIB has pledged to triple its global climate adaptation finance by 2025.

The EIB screens all projects it finances for the risks of climate change and ensure they are adapted to future changes. In the European Union, a new advisory service called ADAPT will help public and private sector clients understand how climate change affects their operations.

Outside the European Union, the EIB will increase support for climate-smart digital technologies for agriculture, climate-resilient infrastructure, cities and entrepreneurship to accelerate innovation in adaptation. The EIB will increase the share of financing it can provide for projects that are primarily motivated by adaptation to 75% of the project cost globally and to 100% in the least developed countries and small island developing states.