Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has been accredited as a partnering institution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), making it the fund’s first African development finance institution.

Accreditation by the GCF enables AFC to access GCF’s committed capital of $9.3bn - a pool of funds for climate change projects to be utilized by members for on-lending, grants, lines of credit, guarantees and other fiduciary functions.

AFC intends to use the fund’s capital to further its investment in renewable energy, a priority sector for the corporation.

As such, AFC is the lead investor in the Cabeolica project, a $90m, 26MWrenewable energy wind power project in Cape Verde and the first commercial scale public private partnership wind farm in Sub-Saharan Africa providing over 20% of Cape Verde’ power needs.

Andrew Alli, President & CEO of AFC, said: “This is very positive news as it reinforces AFC’s status as a multilateral financial institution. Through partnering with the Green Climate Fund, AFC will have access to valuable resources to support investments across a variety of green projects, making a significant contribution to the global efforts to combat climate change”.

The GCF, with headquarters in Songdo Republic of Korea, is a fund operating within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

GCF’s objective is to promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Over time, the GCF is expected to become the main multilateral financing mechanism to support climate action in developing countries.

With a total of 20 accredited entities, the fund is governed by a Board of 24 members and is initially supported by an Interim Secretariat.