 Good afternoon, good morning and welcome to this webinar, which is extremely well-timed. It's on the eve of the COP and it's also the day of a publication of an important landmark new report which I'll get to just in a moment. On behalf of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and our partners, FSD Africa, I'm very grateful to the speakers and to the audience for joining us for this one-hour conversation. We frame this as a stocktake of climate finance in Africa. Of course, stocktake is an important word in the lexicon of international climate politics and negotiations and a critical piece of the COP that starts this week. Our stocktake is framed around Africa's climate finance needs and we'll be getting into that topic in terms of both the supplier finance and to some extent the demand side during the course of this next one-hour conversation. I'll give you a very brief bit of background before introducing the speakers and beginning that conversation. Part of the background to this is an expert group that I co-chaired in 2019 and 2020 with Amar Bhattachaya who joins us today and that was a group that whose assignment was to focus on the 100 billion by 2020 target which is an important piece of the overall international climate finance picture. Last year a bigger group co-chaired by Vera Songwe who had hoped to join us today but in fact is now literally leaving for the airport in Washington DC to get to Dubai later today. Co-chaired by her and by Lord Nick Stern a group was constructed, commissioned by COP 27 and again this year COP 28 in order to take a much deeper look at the climate finance architecture. Last year our report and I serve on that group came up with a very important figure of $2.4 trillion per year by 2030 every year between now and 2030 for emerging market and developing country economies excluding China. We also looked at how that money would be put together the sources of that finance a very important step forward and focusing the tension on what is needed to take action. The new report that is published today which Amar is going to speak to very shortly updates that picture updates the storyline in relation to the 100 billion but then poses an even bigger and more important exam question which is this what is the climate finance architecture that's needed to live on Paris. The report also focuses on the how of climate finance with a bigger nod to the demand side namely how to develop the project pipeline, how to organize the joined up thinking between domestic policymakers, private financiers and international climate finance donors and banks. What it seeks to do is to define a pathway to action with a really important underlying theme which is finance with purpose and I think that's a really important theme to take into this COP not just getting the money but being very clear-minded about what it's for and what it's going to achieve and the transformation that it will catalyze. So for all those reasons I'm very happy that we have that opportunity today in this webinar to get a first look at that new report. There's a report a shorter more focused report in Africa which our researcher Lauren Bolt will speak to later which seeks to answer the question what is the state of play in terms of climate finance in Africa and which is a supplement to the report of the independent high-level expert group that Amar Bhattacharya is the chief writer of the report and that's why I'm delighted you can join us. The other two members of a stellar panel of speakers today are as follows Songa Sandi Okoth who is the capital market specialist in green finance at FSD Africa, our partners. Secondly, Ponki Modise who is head of strategy and sustainability at Absa Bank who wrote a compelling article in South Africa's business day newspaper last week talking about Africa's climate action needs and preparing her thinking and the finance community's thinking ahead of this year's COP. So with those few introductory remarks, let me hand now immediately to you Amar to take us through the approach that this year's report of the independent high-level expert group has taken and perhaps if I could ask you before you get into the detail of the recommendations and the very important findings of the report, if you could give us a sense of what, as the chief writer and architect of our work, was your game plan? What's the strategy that lies behind this really important report? Amar, over to you. So since you asked me that question Richard, well first of all just a clarification, publishing dates of reports are always complicated by the advice of Tom's teams not only ours but COP28 and we will be publishing the report summary version tomorrow. Second, I am speaking to you from COP28. So I've been in meetings already this morning and it's very, very clear that finance is going to be a central topic for this COP led very much by the COP president himself. So it's a really timely and third, there's a very strong focus on Africa and that's I think really welcome. So indeed coming with some clarity on what the agenda is for Africa and what needs to be done, who does what, this is the moment to actually discuss and act on it. So our plan is very much to land the report, I mean the theme of the report and I'll come back to it again is acceleration and implementation and that means being very clear about who has to do what. The good news is there has been important momentum building over the past year on actions both in terms of ambition but also in terms of specificity. We had as you know, we have had this famous Prince Town initiative that has been focused particularly on issues of vulnerability. Second, we had the Paris New Global Financing Pat, which has tried to take an integrated approach very similar to what we are doing. Third, we've had a G20 that's been very strongly focused on investment and finance and on connecting climate with the development agenda. We've had a lot of focus on the multilateral development banks, a lot of that you saw in the Marrakesh World Bank IMF and annual meetings and in a very welcome way especially for your institute. The private sector has featured very prominently not just in terms in two dimensions. One is the role of the private sector in incentivizing change, so shifting the money from the dirty to the clean and the second is mobilizing the financing that will be necessary for developing countries and emerging markets for the transition that has to happen. So with that backdrop, let me turn to our report. So as Richard said, our first report really looked at what is the investment that we must finance and for what and where and our assessment was that we needed about $2.4 trillion per annum by 2030 and the three buckets or I would say five buckets where we see those investment needs are first and foremost the energy transition and this is energy transition in two ways. One is providing energy for those who don't have it and for the purposes of development and for the developing world and especially Africa, much of the story is about incremental energy. It's not with this exception of South Africa, it's less about transforming the existing energy system a lot more about actually providing the energy that will be needed to meet current needs. For example, in Africa, the per capita consumption of electricity right now is one-fifth that of India and the bulk of the 800 million people who do not have electricity, most of them are in Africa. So when we talk about the just energy transition, it's not just about dealing with those who may be displaced by coal, the bigger challenge for a just energy transition is providing that electricity at reasonable cost to the populations that don't have it. So in thinking about that investment, we should not be just thinking about this as a proposition of moving from the bad to the good, it is first and foremost massively scaling up the good and with it the kind of support structures and infrastructure that will be necessary. For example, in the grid, for example, in the transport system, for example, in buildings, energy efficiency and the like. So the energy transition is at the heart of this but the reality is, and I'll come to that, there is very little happening in the space or too little happening in the space in emerging markets and developing countries. The second area where we need to invest, so of the 2.4 trillion, roughly about one and a half trillion is for that energy transition. The second area we need to invest is adaptation and resilience and it's a little bit like a cascade because we are not investing enough in mitigation, we have to do even more in adaptation and resilience and the kinds of magnitudes of numbers we are thinking about for adaptation and resilience by 2030 is about 300 billion. In relative terms, Africa is at the top of this list because Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate change and the starting points are weak. So this is a huge agenda for Africa. Third, climate change is already upon us because we are not mitigating enough and we are not adapting enough. So loss and damage is a big issue and we estimate that by 2030 loss and damage numbers could be anywhere from 200 to 400 billion, large range of uncertainty on that number but that's the world we live in. And finally, we have to provide for just transition in terms of phase out of fossil fuels, just transition for economies that have to transition and just transition to ensure that this is an inclusive transition pathway and that they are adequate safety nets to protect and especially protect women and children who the data suggests are disproportionately affected by the transitions we are talking about. So that's the basis of the numbers. Now notwithstanding the scale of the needs and the imperative and the opportunities that exist, the reality is we are falling behind and we are falling behind in emerging markets and developing countries with regard to investment. So the reason we are off track on the global stock day is principally because we are not investing enough and because much of the investment we are making is misdirected. It is misdirected because too much of the money is still being invested in the fossil fuel economy rather than the new clean economy and it is misdirected because emerging markets and developing countries have only received 7% of the clean energy investment in the last four years. So clean energy investment very encouragingly has picked up greatly in the last four years but it is concentrated in China and in the advanced economies. There are a few bright spots like India a little bit in Brazil but by and large developing countries are missing out of this party and Africa is missing out big time. Only 10 billion of clean energy investment out of a global total of 530 billion or so in the last four years has been devoted to Africa. So we are falling behind on the clean energy transition. The data shows that we are falling behind even more on adaptation and resilience and the data shows we are also falling behind and I forgot to mention this when I was going to the landscape but we are also falling behind natural capital. At the moment there is a huge asymmetry, 90% of the natural capital that needs to be protected is in the south, 80% of the spending is in the north and Africa again is central to that story. Let me speed up a bit of the agenda. So as Richard said a very important focus of our report is to say if we want investment we must have the institutional structures and the policy frameworks to unlock those investments at scale otherwise finance is academic. So we have to find the institutional structures that can lead to these investable projects but not a project at a time but for a system transformation that we need in energy, in transport, in water, in food and land use in cities all with that prism of climate and sustainable development and we do not have that right now. One approach that is being put forward are country platforms with a clear objective is sectoral focus such as energy transition but also to serve other needs as I mentioned such as adaptation or natural capital or water or food and land use in the life and these country platforms really bring under the leadership of the country can bring together in a purposeful way all the relevant stakeholders for accelerated action with accountability and the just energy transition program of South Africa is one such example and there are others but all of these examples show that putting in place these platforms is not an easy task. It's not an easy task in the country and it's not an easy task in terms of getting the kind of predictable long-term commitment that we need from the donors and it is not easy in getting the private sector fully into the form so these are still very much work at hand. The second thing I wanted to mention also is before we get to a new system of finance we have to be able to restore trust and the restoration of trust the most important list litmus test is the delivery of the 100 billion commitment. As of 2021 firm data indicate the commitment had not been met. The good news is preliminary but as yet unverified data which the OECD has looked at which I have looked at suggests that most likely the target was met in 2022 and will be quite firmly met in 2023 that's a huge kind of step not because it is enough but at least it allows us to move forward and in moving forward it has to serve as the basis for a much more ambitious climate finance targets and architecture. It's also important to deliver on some other promises such as the replenishment of the green climate fund such as the idle crisis facility such as the recycling of SDRs and most crucially on the operationalization and adequate credible funding for the loss of damage fund. Now even if we do all that that's not going to get us to the trillion so what is necessary now on the finance side to get us to the trillions and I often like to think about I mean first of all it's very important to recognize that we will only get there if we recognize if we bring all pools of finance effectively to the task and what do we mean by all pools of finance we mean domestic and international public and private so there are four such big domestic public resource mobilization and you know this has constituted the largest source of investment it won't constitute as high a source because we see a lot more opportunity for the private sector but there are still many many investments that require the public you know budget support and so domestic public resource mobilization is crucial one big two big tasks for Africa in that regard the first is to strengthen you know tax revenues which means avoiding or dealing with tax avoidance strengthening tax capacity you know international support here can be very very important and the digitalization you know of the tax systems also allows everybody now a better handle on how to improve tax performance second in Africa and everywhere there is a possibility now of getting revenues from taxing the bag and using that in a purposeful way for investments in the good I am particularly talking about the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies about repurposing agricultural subsidies that can be quite harmful to nature and the big possibilities around the adoption of carbon taxation carbon price if we do that then the kinds of sums we are talking about domestic resource mobilization is feasible and domestic resource mobilization as I said is the largest part of this inverted pyramid that we have to focus on second we have to get the private sector into the story both because that's where the opportunity is a lot of these investments can be done by the private sector it can be financed by the private sector but at the moment we are in a abysmally low situation with the flow of private finance we estimate that we will need something like 500 billion of private finance externally and at the moment what is flowing is maybe 20 to 30 billion for the clean energy proposition so we need an increase of 15 to 20 times in a very short period of time so the second very very big task of focus which we put in the report with a very detailed agenda is this harnessing of private finance third the role of multilateral development banks which has historically been quite divisive is now seen is absolutely central because of two roles that the mpbs play one is they are the agents that can work with that help countries on the scaling up of the investment proposition and second because they can they have unique strengths in mobilizing low-cost finance and using it that for both direct lending but also for crowding in private finance finally we will need concessional finance the whole climate finance architecture has been fraught with this that you rich countries haven't delivered enough and year after year we have been having shortfalls and even if you look at the 100 billion the the smallest progress as it were is in the bilateral climate finance commitment so yes you know we think that we must triple bilateral climate finance from where we were you know in 2019 to where we need to be in 2030 but even if we do do that we are not going to produce the scale of concessional finance and debt-free finance that we need so we see two big possibilities one at the international level again taxing the bad to generate predictable resources and second big possibility is a much more systematic approach to philanthropy where we are looking at individual philanthropy and corporate philanthropy as a way to kind of channel much more resources including you know through voluntary you know carbon markets and the like and we see we think if we pursue these measures we can mobilize the scale of the financing that is necessary so I want to keep adequate time for the for the rest so I'm going to wrap up now including let me say that we are at a moment where because of the momentum that I was talking about we can actually seize the opportunity but the opportunity really means we must have a system of accountability where all stakeholders are coming together but have to be in some sense held accountable for what they can deliver on uniquely if we are not making progress on the unlocking of investment you know based on clear long-term strategies ultimately that's a responsibility for countries themselves and we have to set a task that we have to move to the sector and country platforms not just in one or two cases across the world but everywhere where we want to make climate and development progress and countries have to take you know a strong leadership role on that with international benchmarking to in some sense help us assess how well we are doing second very very important for the private sector now to be part of this game they are taking a much much more proactive approach you know we work with them very closely in the preparation of this report and I was very honestly impressed with the to the extent that the private sector wants to contribute but as Dr Sultan says you know based on our work finance has to be available it has to be accessible and it has to be affordable and so it's not just a question of getting the private finance but also you know the quality of that finance will be very important as will the quality of official finance so at COP 28 we are very hopeful that world leaders will come together on this agenda in a unified way that commits them and commits the world to much more ambitious action we are confident I think that some of the key players like the multilateral development banks and the private sector will follow suit and we are confident that we will get much more of a formal understanding in I think where we have we can help through the kind of work that we have done to ensure that the world at large at least knows where the compass is and we do not spend as much time and effort as we have asked on divisive debates over to you Richard. Thank you Amar thank you for covering such a large amount of material in such a short bit of time with your customary lucidity I'm very grateful to you I particularly like the part of our report and I congratulate you on the progress on this front in terms of the private sector you call it the highway for private finance and I'm going to ask Punky in a moment to from a private sector finance perspective offer some thoughts about that acknowledging of course Punky that you haven't seen the report yet it'll come out tomorrow as Amar says but what I like about that section of your work this time Amar is that it's obvious that the conversation with the private sector has been much more real and granular it's an advance on what I think has been the very platitudinous conversation about private finance over 10 to 15 years de-risking crowding in blended finance blah blah a lot of talk but not enough specificity of action not enough clarity about who must do what when and how and I think our report takes that agenda forward the one thing you didn't touch on Amar which I need you just to spend 30 seconds on before we move on is debt because many of the people in this audience are alumni of our climate finance leadership program they're in public finance institutions in African countries and we know and we acknowledge this in the report that many of those countries are afflicted by debt uh crisis is the report talks about creating more fiscal space to enable uh countries to to get climate finance and use it effectively domestic mobilization is is not realistic unless one also takes care of debt am I right Amar can you just comment on that yeah absolutely yeah one one challenge of speaking without any notices you forget sometimes a big thing and I forgot the big thing of debt and fiscal space uh so debt uh is of paramount importance at this point in time because the response to covid and the response to the very difficult period we have had has meant that many countries have had to rack up debt uh and most countries are very stretched on fiscal space but I want to make a point about this that's very important uh in understanding the biggest increases in debt that have taken place in the last several years have been in the advanced economies in China not in emerging markets and developing countries the problem of emerging markets and developing countries is as much about the terms of the debt as it is more about the terms of the debt than the level of the debt it's important analytically to understand that and we we lay that out in the report so you could think about the solution set for developing countries especially in Africa falling into the following buckets first there are clearly a bunch of countries you know zambia's of the world which will need debt restructuring and we have made some progress under the common framework but it is just too slow okay so we need to have a much more efficient effective process of debt restructure in some possible innovative options that could be pursued one of them is for example debt buybacks you know uh so we there so that is number one problem second for the vast majority the problem is the high cost of debt service and it comes from two facts one is the tenor of the debt it's very very short term there's a good news part to it which is if you look at the at the maturity of the debt it's actually a two-year problem after that debt begins to fall quite sharply given the structure of the debt but nevertheless we have that challenge and the second is private sector debt for Africa is extremely expensive so we argue in the report two things one is we perhaps need to continue the dssi like mechanisms to improve the flow of debt and the second thing we argue is it is great to replace high cost private debt with low cost official debt so we argue for a major expansion of sdrs of ida and of bilateral finance to get rid of this private sector debt which was in ill-advisably taken on thinking it would provide a solution to investment and it has not it has become an impediment with and the third part i want to emphasize very quickly is we have to break the vicious cycle between climate and debt vulnerability we get climate shocks we take on more debt and taking on more debt makes our ability to act on climate that much less so what's the ways in doing it there's a liquidity insurance part of it and then there is a structural part the liquidity power is is is to put in place a contingent clauses so that once an adverse event happens you know automatically you know debt repayment would be postponed that can have huge impact Prime Minister Motley of Barbados has been championing this there has been some progress some issues in case if there's interest but the other part you know of this is also to recognize that there is simply no way that insurance and debt can solve the problem when 30-40% of your GDP has been wiped out so we need an effective loss and damage system sorry Richard take time but it's a complex issue sorry to rush you but i'm very glad we covered that point because i know it's a really critical importance on our continent so let me turn now to the other two panelists and then and then to a broader conversation and and and get moving um Pumki Mondizzi thank you so much for joining us i think you've arrived already in Dubai like Amar you're already at the COP um so i've got three questions for you if i may you're the head of strategy and sustainability apsa bank a major south african bank with a footprint across the continent you go to why are you going to COP what are your what are your what's your purpose in going there what do you hope to achieve there what's your game plan for this year's COP thank you Richard for having me um and that's a very interesting question you're asking about you know us as a bank participating in the in the COP i think to Amar's point at the private sector plays a central role in enabling uh you know the transition uh from where we are at and i think as a bank uh from an apsa perspective we quite hear that you know uh without uh you know the people of the continent there is no just uh there is no transition uh to be quite honest and uh we want to therefore ensure that we contribute in a positive way in the conversation to influence them also you know best based on you know some of our understanding in terms of you know how the financial sector and the financial systems work uh because as you know Richard i mean financial systems is central i think to this debate um and if i look at this year in particular um a significant component of the discussion will be around you know how we unlock uh loss and damage but also at the same time is how we unlock the 100 billion uh you know commitment that was made and create the right policy frameworks uh to enable the effective utilisation offered so that we can transition and transition in the most effective manner thanks thank you and in in terms of uh in particular this COP uh what do you think are the priorities for the african continent and i'm having in mind the excellent piece you wrote in business day last week when you set out some of your thoughts in this regard absolutely um so there's obviously five key priorities uh you know for this COP the first one being the stock take of progress that has thus far been made um and then the second one is to highlight i think efforts to establish the loss and damage fund for climate related impacts and then the third one being largely to emphasise i think building resilience i think in the african economies in particular through adaptation measures you know calling for clear goals and also indicators for global adaptation and then the fourth one uh you know pertains to the just transition uh web program largely aiming at ensuring that we can agree on modalities and pushing also for a financing framework you know that will address the diverse stages of transition uh that the different countries are in and in particular i think as a continent i mean we've got about 54 55 countries in the continent and we've got to make sure that we recognise also the nuances uh you know that are involved in each of those countries to ensure that as we transition we can effectively you know transition so with that context in mind uh obviously after the bank we play a part across the board but for us it's critical that you know we have clear frameworks uh we should assist i think the countries to transition and from an ups upon no view ups as you know is a pen african bank and we want to ensure that you know the pipeline is effectively you know opened up in order for us to be able to effectively support the transition so if i look at you know the funding requirements of the continent they are significant but if the policy framework and also projects that are in place are not uh you know appropriately taken care of so that they can be bankable it makes it difficult i think for us as financial services to play a part so we really want to influence i think the conversation and also contribute positively to those countries to those conversations to ensure that we can effectively support the transition thanks it seems to me conceptually that you sit as a private finance player on the african continent between the sort of global public climate finance landscape that amar was referring to the beginning of his presentation and the kind of on the ground projects that will turn that money into actual progress and action um do you think there is progress being made in terms of the the very specific conversations that have to take place between the different role players to turn that into reality or is there still too much circling around the issues so that obviously this for me i think is a very complex uh meta and uh you know you therefore need to take a much more practical and considered approach as to you know how you you tackle it so i think that's the biggest challenge that is facing the space but if i look at uh for example you know you've got the accounting standards uh which have now been approved um and which uh you know uh the isp i think is working to ensure that they can be adopted uh come beginning of the i think for me that is one of the biggest first steps uh you know towards uh ensuring uh that we can effectively transition and enable the funding because what those standards are aiming you know to achieve firstly is the reliability in reporting because currently i mean um because there is no you know standardized way of reporting it's very difficult i think to get a clear sense of where we are all at whereas once you get the standardization in reporting then you start to get a good sense of you know the progress that's been made in the space and then i think secondly is uh the new standards are going to enabling uh enable interoperability you know with interoperability then you start to get the markets uh you know deepening even further where you've got investors you know who are a lot more willing i think to put money in this space and this is an opportunity that i think as a continent we have to you know take with both arms in particular in ensuring that you know we adopt i think those uh new standards are quick enough because they will enable us to have access uh or greater access i think to the funding uh that is available uh i'll say so yeah i think richard i mean from my perspective is uh you know watching the space especially as far as relates to you know the implementation and adoption you know of the new accounting standards is going to be a great a great step forward in terms of ensuring you know that we can have interoperability and also we can enable the continent to access the much needed funding and also the right frameworks also in place which will enable uh you know the funding to be accessible uh particularly uh in the continent thanks very much uh from key that's uh and i look forward to getting your reaction to what our report says about the private finance highway uh and our suggestions uh about how to organize the conversations to turn this uh opportunity and to realize this opportunity so thank you i may come back to you later with this time uh let me turn now even more down my conceptual framework to the demand side to closer to the ground as it were and and bring in sandy uh and then lauron and and susan norogo who's our partner uh and colleague in in Nairobi um sandy let me begin with you fsd africa you and i uh we've been working institutionally in a partnership the last couple of years to build climate finance leadership in african countries um what's your game plan that's the same question i've asked the previous two speakers what's your game plan looking at this landscape and and thinking ahead to how fsd africa working with us and others will help help to to realize this potential yeah thank you richard and good afternoon everyone uh just to answer your question richard i'd like to reflect on the key rolling calls that came out of the africa climate summit you know there was a rolling call for us to urgently reduce carbon emission and for us to urgently accelerate uh invest climate investments in africa and when i look at organizations like fsd africa you know we were set up to strengthen build and deepen the financial sector not only to promote economic development but also to build resilience and and resilience is very key especially when you look at uh the climate side of things so i think our state of play remains the same um we were fortunate enough to work on a collaborative piece last year just looking at you know the the status of climate finance in africa and you know our approach is is still to lobby organizations both in the public and the private sector to look at how do we then adopt you know strategies that address africa's current reality and our current reality is one where you know africa is very vulnerable to climate but then on the converse of that you know we have a very youthful population we have an africa that is quickly urbanizing and this gives us an opportunity to build resilient infrastructure just to make sure that you know we are deploying sustainable finance to both promote economic development from a green um from from from a green footprint and also ensure that you know we're building resilient for the young population in africa uh when you look at the rallying call to you know urgently uh invest to urgently invest in climate solutions you know this gives us an opportunity to work on the hard to obey sectors uh when you look at economies like nigeria for example you know climate finance is very low in nigeria because nigeria is very fossil heavy and you know in our tracking we found that um aspects such as natural gas received more financing from the private sector than the actual climate financial flows that were tracked in nigeria and you know when you look at the vulnerability story of nigeria nigeria is highly highly vulnerable to climate and and some of the cities are actually very vulnerable and and are predicted to be you know some of the cities in the world that are going to sink so we want to work jointly with you know the public sector in nigeria and the private sector in nigeria to see that we are progressing them towards um you know a green kind of economy foot pathway where we are looking at the hard to obey sectors um and and we are lobbying for you know more greener uh energies and and more energy uh poverty kind of issues to be tackled um again i think fsd africa plays a very critical role in terms of um convening the right kind of partnerships and also in terms of catalyzing the right kind of capital so we want to see you know an increased um uh increased strategy where we convene more partners and and we also work jointly with uh the the private sector to see that we mobilize more domestic capital uh towards some of the challenges that you know africa continues to face um again you know another issue that um fsd africa is very critical at tackling is is the whole issue around data and and disclosure and when you look at some of the financial instruments that we push for the sustainable finance instruments ideally you know they have very clear reporting mechanisms and they have very clear governance and accountability mechanisms uh we want to see our economies you know be integrated in terms of data and and reporting um and disclosure because this will enable us to track um you know the right kind of data and also enable us to report on the impact of some of these finances that uh we are mobilizing and and finally richard um i would just want to talk about you know how we work as well with the public sector to create an enabling environment i think in in tracking climate finance we've realized that there's a lot of work that still needs to be done um especially to you know boost on the adaptation and resilience front uh because uh the notion is that you know there's not enough um policies and regulations to ideally attract uh this kind of finances but then on the converse you find that there's a lot of uh policy and regulation that has been developed but most of them haven't yet been operationalized so we want to see that you know our economies are operationalizing some of these policies and and regulations so that ideally we boost um you know the numbers on on climate and we see that you know we are building more resilient economies uh here in Africa i'll stop there thanks so much sandy i think your programmatic agenda and strategy is absolutely fit for purpose it's why we uh are continue keen to continue to work with you as partners we think it's a valuable proposition to have Cambridge work with FSD Africa and other partners around the continent to build different forms of capital to accompany the financial capital and you spoke of different forms of capital uh i always smile at some of our meetings of the high-level expert group mr it's mostly people like mr who have a deep background in finance i'm just a simple-minded lawyer so i find myself asking Ray Bakes basic questions about the language uh and the technical side of things and i also like to introduce the notion of human capital because in the end money is useless without people to actually operationalize it to spend it to execute uh clear-minded uh plans so on the subject of human capital let me briefly introduce uh Susan uh to Rogay from Nairobi who is a CISL fellow and working closely with us on this and other projects Susan can you just offer your thoughts about the importance of human capital and then i'll turn to Laurent as we begin to conclude Susan good thank you and just we can't see you throw it off a little bit because my okay i think i think my video should be coming on soon it could be a consequence of there you are the power okay great so thanks richard um for this uh chance i think maybe i'll start by rephrasing and i'll say it's about the importance of human not human capital but the importance of people because i think when we talk about the the crisis that we're in pollution crisis if i can use more normal human speak be it from an emissions every single organization is going to need someone who foundationally every employee has a foundational understanding of sustainability but then they'll also need people that have specialized knowledge whether it's carbon accounting social economic accounting ecosystems valuation that skill set has to consider and we look at the specialized industry shall we say of of finance we need financial from from Amar's insights sorry Susan i'm going to hand it over to you Susan i'm so sorry of Africa and our own go ahead Richard i can hear you sorry your line has become very bad unfortunately we're struggling to hear you um i don't know if there's anything you can do about that but maybe whilst you look at that let me just quickly you're making very important points about skills required human capacity and capability to deliver on climate finance really really critical point to my mind but whilst you see if you can improve your connectivity there let me turn briefly to Laurent can you Laurent very quickly in two minutes explain the report that we've as Cambridge produced recently and which is our small contribution to this emerging new landscape around climate finance sure thanks Richard effectively what we've done is looked at the climate promises made in the nationally determined contributions and by each African country and what we see more or less is that African countries are proposing around two gigatons or maybe a third production in emissions by 2030 um when compared to what would otherwise happen um in their indices subject to getting enough finance and that amount that financial amount is roughly two and a half trillion dollars by 2030 so more or less 10 of what Amar was talking about um per annum what kind of projects are there so overwhelmingly they're sort of land use and forestry projects about deforestation there is a very significant contribution of the energy transition as well as I mentioned and then finally the other big contributor is agriculture electrification of agriculture and reducing emissions in in the waste management and um what we're currently spending is in the order of 30 billion dollars a year so you know an eighth of of what the total quantum required is we also ask the question of why we're spending less than we should be and so we have two things one is the demand for finance so the demand for money to spend on on climate projects part of it has to do with the bad sort of macroeconomic environment for African states you know weak currencies and the high cost of debt as well as the what uh what you were touching on just now about the sort of institutional architecture and the the skills available to prepare the pipeline of projects and then to implement them in ways like having enough engineers for a renewable grid uh and then you also have the supply side which is the availability of finance question um how concessional it is uh how much private sector participation there is based on you know the private sector version to risk and whether we can address that uh the lack of global funding and then finally the domestic resource mobilization problem you know fossil fuel subsidies carbon taxation will be key key developments and then we came to a couple of key takeaways um one of them is is an increase in concessional financing to African countries another one is African countries need to look into their sort of institutional architectures both regulatory sense and a sort of who is planning the climate transition and who is implementing this sort of pipeline um we also need to look at the sort of demand side uh finally maybe uh greater domestic resource mobilization and um given the reliance on on land use projects we need a sort of standardized way of interpreting how much mission how many missions are being mitigated and um how reliable those are thank you so much Lauren that paper which is a background paper uh which informed a recent symposium we held in Cape Town to inform uh my new program the Africa program for Cambridge uh we'll publish that report to everybody who's attended this webinar and everyone else from our network we'll do that tomorrow alongside giving you proper connectivity to the high-level expert group report that Amar spoke to earlier that'll be published tomorrow so we'll make sure both those reports and I think they're very aligned they're very consistent in terms of their messaging and they I hope will be useful to all of you who are working in this space as you start to think through your own strategies Susan um we're sort of out of time someone in chat has asked if you could type in some of the points that you were making really important about points about skills and and human capability unless you've got your wi-fi fixed and can just speak for a moment or two as we begin to close this webinar Susan if not can I there's a very there's one very particularly interesting question in the chat which is this considering increasing adverse impacts of climate change drought cyclones floods etc on food systems in Africa how can climate finance be leveraged to address nutrition and food security issues in Africa well in our report the the high-level group we spoke to the Egyptian case so the Egyptian country platform is different from South Africa because it is focused on the nexus between food energy and water and it's customized to the needs of Egypt and they have with considerable clear-mindedness enabled different sources of finance to serve those three buckets but in a joined up fashion that's country ownership and it's a case study in country ownership because it is a customized design from the Egyptian government but going to to international markets to access the climate finance from three different sources to serve that particular strategy so it's very much worth use very very very useful I think to look at that case study so we're coming to the end of this I don't want to exceed my goodwill with all of the people who have joined this webinar my particular thanks to the three speakers Sandy thank you for the partnership the work we do together we plan to raise our game and really be ambitious in the way we seek to serve the demand side to build the human capital in order to strengthen the ability of African countries to access and then deploy financial capital and I'm very much looking forward to working with you and our two organizations over the coming years. Punky Modise thank you for joining us I wish you well at Dubai I hope we'll get together there I hope that you will find the report from the high-level group interesting and that you will be deal making there in order to get that private finance flowing into the system at the level that Amar says is necessary. Amar thank you so much for your time your tireless devotion to this cause is a source of inspiration to all of us and your willingness always to find time to speak at events like this in service of greater understanding of complex issues at a critical moment in history is absolutely admirable and I'm grateful to you so thank you for finding time in your schedule which I know is very demanding I wish you well in Dubai also and for the publication of the report tomorrow and the high-level meeting that I know will be taking place on Monday where you will present that report to leaders and other key players in the international system. To the audience thank you all very much for joining this has been a really I think useful and stimulating I see that there are positive comments in the chat room so I'm grateful to you all thank you very much have a good afternoon and hope to see you all soon.