Blended Finance Learning Forum – Series 2

For SDGs,Africa needs to crowd-in private sector funds from the capital markets. This requires key players to leverage innovative blended finance transactions.

According to a recent report produced by The Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, remittances, Official Development Assistance (ODA), and portfolio flows to Africa have “taken a nosedive and are likely to remain subdued through 2021.” The same report points out that the“financing gap for SDGs is expected to widen, increasing fiscal vulnerability on African governments”.1 Brookings Institute’s Africa In Focus report, estimates the continent needs between$500 billion and $1.2 trillion annually to meet the SDGs by 2030 yet one in three Sub-Saharan countries can not raise enough revenues to meet basic state functions.

To meet the SDGs, Africa needs to urgently and strategically crowd-in private sector funds from the capital markets valued at about $250 trillion. Attracting private sector capital will require key development players to leverage innovative blended finance transactions that can help de-risk social investments.

The organizers of this virtual seminar series, believe that Blended Finance can disrupt traditional development finance as we know it, by leveraging and deploying grant funds as catalytic risk capital in order to attract and crowd-in private sector capital for development initiatives. The broader theme in having this virtual seminar series is about igniting thought leadership, collaboration and action around the adoption of innovative financing models that will help Kenya, and by extensionEast Africa, Build Back Stronger post COVID, while also achieving the UN SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs).

To help promote the concept of Blended Finance, relevant and timely knowledge about innovative financing is critical. This virtual seminar series (part two) is only one way of building and capturing such knowledge.