Financing SMEs in Africa: Rethinking the Role of Development Finance Institutions
April 08, 2025
Location: Online
Date: November 3 to 5, 2025
Time: from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Webinars (registration required): LINK
↪ Conference consisting of three webinars held over three days.
↪ Simultaneous French–English interpretation.
Following an initial conference held in July 2021, which highlighted Africa’s disproportionate vulnerability to climate change and the need to mobilize all stakeholders to finance mitigation and adaptation, this new edition will revisit and deepen the same theme.
It will examine the role of financial intermediaries—banks, insurance companies, investment funds, rating agencies, central banks, and development banks—as well as public financing, in catalyzing private capital to combat climate change in Africa.
Analyse the current and potential role of the international and continental financial sectors in combating climate change in Africa, focusing on the mandates of financial actors — banks, insurance companies, investment funds, rating agencies, national and multilateral development banks, regulators, and central banks — as well as the role of public funding in mobilising private finance.
Identify the obstacles and opportunities for financing a just and inclusive climate transition and adaptation, without crowding out development and poverty reduction financing.
Explore innovative economic and financial models adapted to African socio-economic realities (e.g. green tontines), and compare them with those implemented in Northern countries.
Propose concrete and realistic recommendations to strengthen the financial sector’s contribution to the fight against climate change in Africa.
↪ Role of the private financial sector in combating climate change
↪ Measuring and regulating climate finance
↪ Assessing the effects of climate change on investments
Welcome remarks:
Keynote:
Moderator:
Panelists:
↪ The role of international and domestic public development banks
↪ The leverage effects of public resources
↪ Public development banks in the financial architecture of development
Keynote:
Moderator:
Panelists:
↪ Banking supervision and macroprudential tools
↪ Financial stability
↪ Monetary policy and climate risk integration
Keynote:
Moderator:
Panelists:
