 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this webinar. Today we're going to talk about the role of development finance institutions in Africa and how we can get recipient country priorities into the better into the mix. The webinar is organized by the Stockholm Sustainable Finance Centre together with Overseas Development Institute, ODI. Stockholm Sustainable Finance Centre is a collaboration initiative between Stockholm School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. There's a lot of Stockholms there, but we and it's running over a number of years with funding from the Swedish government. One of the mandates of the Centre SSFC is to support the scaling of investment in climate and the SDGs in developing countries. There are large gaps in financing that we all know about and there's a clear need to better understand how we can mobilize more private capital. And development finance institutions have an important role to play to bridge between ODA and commercial finance. And this role in mobilizing private capital should play an increasingly important role in the coming years given the needs that developing countries currently face. And the SSFC report that we're going to discuss today supports this agenda, provides research insights on potential strategic opportunities for DFIs to broaden their impact on SDGs achievements by aligning or appropriate with national government priorities and development efforts. So with that I'd like to hand over to Aaron Maltes, who's the director of SSFC. Thank you, Mons. My name is Aaron Maltes and I'm a senior research fellow at Stockholm Environment Institute and the program director for the Stockholm Stamble Finance Centre. And we're very happy that you've been able to join us today for this webinar where we will first start with a presentation of the report, understanding the role of development finance institutions in promoting development and assessment of three African countries. And after the presentation we will have a panel discussion for about 30 minutes and then we'll open up for questions also from the audience. And in the panel we're really excited to have a great set of panelists here representing some key institutions. So we have Eric Berri-Lev, chief economist at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. He's also a member of the SSFC's advisory board. Bruno Venn, who is the chairman of the Association of European DFIs. Jofi Grant is the CEO of Ghana Investment Promotion Centre. Stefan Dreihaupt, who is a principal economist at the IFC, International Finance Corporation. And Azetz Werra, who is a senior economist at the financial sector, deepening FSD in Kenya. So I'll hand over now to my colleague George and Alberto to give us the presentation of the report. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you Mons and thank you for attending everyone. So in what follows I'll give a very quick highlight of the reports. And this report was motivated by the need to fill some gaps that we found in the literature and also in the discussion around DFIs and their impact on development. Next slide please. So these are the authors. This report was written by myself and a team of other colleagues from ODI in London. Next slide. So a bit of an introduction here. First of all we acknowledge and everybody believe also acknowledge that the DFIs are very important developing players. And these are financial actors who take advantage of private sector opportunities to invest in advancing different development outcomes in different contests. And in Africa there are a number of DFIs that we can think of over 200 on the continent including domestic and then foreign DFIs. And their impact has been well known usually contributing towards economic growth in the recipient countries through revenue generation for the government and also direct employment to either the firms or the financial intermediaries that they invest through using different instruments. But what is often lacking or missing in this discussion and also in the literature is an understanding of the role of development plans and how they may or should be viewed by DFIs. So what we do here is to focus on understanding the role of DFIs towards supporting a recipient countries development agenda. But in the sense that we want to see the extent to which they align with these national development efforts or priorities. And if they do align what are the opportunities that there are for DFIs to take advantage of and how this should be done. And so we assess this in three countries Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia. Our question is basically taking cognizance of DFIs own development that they or impact that they have been making in these countries want to at what extent should they prioritize these recipient countries development agenda. And we do this by reviewing a number of documents that we see as development plans or strategies and synthesize these plans. And why did we do this? Because we want to understand where the opportunities are which sectors that are articulated as strategic sectors or priority sectors and hence provides additional opportunity for DFIs to invest in. And the second point is that we try to map different kinds of financial flows like foreign aid, commercial credit provided by the domestic banking sector. Also foreign direct investment among other flows and DFIs own investment flows to these countries. And the essence here is that we want to see where the funding gaps are, whether they are significant and where perhaps DFIs are under investing and or are not investing at all and are still you know sectors that are commercially viable and where DFIs could take advantage of and go in and invest to enhance their impact. And then the third approach was to take this to the DFIs because the selected group of DFIs six here, a sweat fund, north fund, Fin fund, the IFC, the CDC group of the UK and then the German DFI DEG. And so we engaged them and told them this is what we are doing and what is their perspective on this and how you know should we approach this in terms of the way forward. And so this research is basically very forward looking. It is not an evaluation of any DFI and or their portfolios, but we want to see if there are any additional opportunities that DFIs can take advantage of that aligns with the country priority needs. Next slide. And so one of the key findings here is that we are able to map out these national priority sectors from these voluminous documents that we had to assess. And basically for Ethiopia, there are three main sectors that are of priority to their government from their development plans. It's the agriculture sector, construction sector, and manufacturing sector, which for me is very, very critical because the government of Ethiopia has emphasized that sector to drive their growth and development over the medium term. And for Ghana and Kenya, we find that the five sectors of government importance to them. And the sectors are construction energy for Ghana, transportation, healthcare, ICT, and then yeah, basically that. And for Kenya, we have energy, education, transport, manufacturing, and then ICT sectors. So I'll hand over to my colleague, who will take us through the rest of the key findings that we found. Thank you. Hello, good morning. Thank you, George, for the introductions. So I'll keep going on to the next slide. One of the key findings of the priority sectors alignment that we found is that all the countries make explicit plans that are closely aligned. Sorry, most of the countries aligned their plans to the SDGs, but only Ethiopia makes explicit reference to them. So while there is alignment, there isn't some actual referencing to saying we're going to meet these SDG targets in the plans, except for Ethiopia. Now, we looked at the, as George explained, we looked at the funding flows across a number of different typologies of finance. And we found that alignment exists across all three countries, but is overall highest for Ethiopia across the four different funding flows. On the other hand, commercial bank credit is greatest aligned in Ethiopia, at least of all in Ghana, which means that there's a space in Ghana for DFIs to fill that vacuum. But there's less space in Ethiopia as commercial finance already is flowing in greater volumes towards priority sectors. Aid is most aligned in Kenya. I think there's mainly to do with the fact that Kenya is quite a long history in receiving aid as an aid recipient, and there's a long history of donors working there. So the alignment with country plans has over time aligned with ODA all the way around. And finally, DFI finance, which is what we're here for, is mostly aligned in Kenya if we include funds. But if we exclude funds, so for example, just direct investment either through loans or through equities, then it's actually higher in Ethiopia. So in either case, for Ethiopia, 60% of funds of investments that exclude funds are in priority sectors in Ghana, 58%. So just marginally less for investments that exclude funds, excluding funds are in priority sectors. All right, next, thank you. So as I explained, highest in Ghana followed by, sorry, I made a mistake, they're followed by Ethiopia, should be written there. In Ethiopia, DFIs are financing the agricultural sector and they provide less finance to other two country strategic sectors, manufacturing and construction. In Ghana, there's adequate funding in energy and transport sector while underfunding in construction, healthcare and ICT. And finally in Kenya, there's funding in energy and the manufacturing sector, they seem to receive adequate funding, but education, transport and ICTs are underfunded. Keeping in mind that ICT is relatively new sector, so there's probably room to grow there for funding. And education is kind of hard for DFIs to find opportunities to fund similarly for healthcare, which tends to be more of an older sector. So we have to keep these caveats in mind. However, it's interesting to note that in Ethiopia, which is trying to set up its manufacturing sector through some ACZ, etc., there's less involvement from the DFIs, but that's maybe because there's commercial financing available as the government backs plans and makes it less risky proposition for commercial finance to move into manufacturing. Right, so next slide please. So for the next few slides, we're going to discuss the DFIs perspectives and these come from our discussions from the DFIs and how they interact with governments and government strategies. So most of the DFIs state that there's no specific country strategy in terms of how they want to invest. The IFC is an exception. They have their private sector development strategies that they elaborate together with the World Bank as part of the World Bank Group, but most DFIs tend to respond to shareholder needs in terms of where of priority sectors and priority instruments. So if there's more demand to create jobs, they might shape their investments in the future to provide more jobs. If there's more interest by shareholders to create jobs in manufacturing, that's generally how they're going to shape their investments. So in general, development plans aren't considered a tool and involving governments is considered to be quite risky, but it is important for them to check if they do have credible plans. Otherwise certain large-scale investments, particularly for energy, wouldn't seem to be too risky if the plans are not credible. If the government is placing emphasis on some large-scale energy investments, but it doesn't seem credible, the DFIs are likely not going to go and move into that direction as one would expect. Next slide, please. Interaction with the government can depend on the sector. For example, investments in Forestry tend to involve actors that are local actors and that work in the sector. So there's some kind of interaction there. Renewable energy investments also involve interactions with regulators and governments, particularly on purchasing power, purchasing agreements, and that's where the DFIs will be interacting with government agencies, particularly if they're not necessarily on government strategy and forward development planning. And also, DFI interaction at the local level is in a sense ad hoc. It depends on the availability of people within the DFI that may have local contacts, either in government or with a private sector, but also on whether local institutions from their government, from the home country, are well connected. For example, embassies that may have links to either government or private sector so they can make use of them. Where these are not available, then it's much harder to interact with the government and engage in the planning process even if they wanted to. So there isn't a structured approach to say, particularly because most DFIs, except for the IFC, don't have their own country offices and so it's a lot harder to create an ongoing engagement process that carries across governments and that is beyond changes in personnel either in the government or in the DFI itself. So that makes it a lot harder to engage over the long term and create relationships. Next slide please. DFIs do work with regulatory agencies as we've discussed earlier and they tend to mainly, the key here is that DFIs tend to invest mainly in viable companies and so they aren't particularly let's say interested in government priorities or government interests. It's whether a company is commercially viable and whether it will have development impacts that dictate whether a DFI is going to invest in it or not and so government interaction engagement is an option but it's not necessary or required for their investments. Next slide please. So finally to conclude we just we discussed a couple of steps that to ensure alignment and enhance impact of DFI investments. We think it would be important for DFIs to have a broad understanding at least of what the strategic sectors are for the government to understand the aim is to understand where the government are likely to facilitate foreign investment opportunities. If they are going to facilitate FDI in some sectors and it's likely that DFI investments in these sectors will also be facilitated if they are likely if these sectors, if DFIs want to invest in these sectors and they know that it's a government priority. If there are any roadblocks to investment in these it's a lot easier to engage government and help them remove these roadblocks compared to sectors that are not strategic because the government will have an interest in doing so. So it's good to know if you are aligned and whether there will be positive uptake from the government to help you resolve particular constraints as well. Then you we suggest that you compare these strategic sectors with DFI investment activities to see how closely portfolios currently align and then carry out discussions with key stakeholders and that within government with bilateral donor agencies from the same country or multilateral donor agencies to see if there is a space for DFIs to support investment in these key sectors and then if there is a space to do so invest within the target priority sector. Of course it's important to consider that you don't want to be crowding out commercial finance or other or FDI opportunities but in some cases it might require a DFI investment to kick off foreign direct investment within a sector to show the viability to catalyze investment to have a demonstration effect in particular strategic sectors and a DFI can really play an important role in doing that and therefore create development opportunities if these have been assessed properly. So that's the end of our presentation I hope that makes sense and thank you again. Great thank you George and Alberto for that excellent presentation of the report and one of the things I really like about this study is that you've combined this doing the analysis of the alignment and suggestions on how you could use this type of methodology among DFIs to identify strategic sectors with actual interviews with the DFIs and asking them you know what do you think about this basic hypothesis that we have and that part of the analysis shows that this topic is nonetheless a bit controversial so it'll be interesting to hear a bit from from our panelists what they think about about this and I thought we would start with the the DFI perspective on this and so I think we'll start with with with Stefan from the from the IFC so the question I started is to what extent do you take country strategies and collaborations with governments into account when developing developing investment strategies and making decisions and if you don't really do that why not and if yes do you have any examples that you can share about whether this was impactful or not and you know kind of lessons learned from that type of engagement. Thank you very much good afternoon everyone I hope you can hear me I didn't have a chance to test before good perfect so once more good afternoon and ladies and gentlemen my pleasure to be on the panel and also to listening to the presentation just now on the findings of the report which you know we supported and engaged in in the interviews and I'm glad you finalized this and sharing us today so I'm my name is Stefan Dryott I'm the principal economist at the IFC the International Finance Corporation for the Africa region IFC is I guess you know is the largest private sector focused development finance here we have over 4,000 staff we're watching based or we have over 4,000 staff across the world had commitments last year of 31.5 billion in F521 and work in more than 100 countries in Africa of course is one of our key areas of engagement we're also part of the World Bank Group as what's said so we are one of the four institutions of the larger World Bank Group and in that sense I speak a bit of a from a position of privilege this morning to about our country engagement process because of course we largely benefit from the larger assist organization the World Bank and the processes that they have set up so maybe just for background let me give a few pointers on how the bank and IFC engages with countries on a strategy level so the core the process is called in World Bank terms as country engagement and the key of this country engagement is a country partnership strategy or company partnership framework CPF and we have this for every single member country we go through this exercise every four to six years it's a it's a country owned process so we start engaging the teams and start engaging with government counterparts but also with the civil society private sector as a starting point looking at the development objectives that countries have and from there develop a framework and of course a framework for also World Bank Group engagement that's the larger World Bank Group so that is not just private sector but it is all covers all areas prior to that the World Bank does a strategic country diagnostics so that's the analytic underpinning it's a diagnostic process again jointly done with the countries where we analyze particular areas and that feeds then into the dialogue for the country partnership strategy and that also has a private sector focus for the IFC we have a separate we have a joint process we're part of that large process but then we have also our own country strategies similar to the bank but they are primarily private sector focus so we look at the private sector context we look again at you know of course government development objectives and how they intersect with private sector issues and we develop then our programming or really more than from a business point of view IFC developed then a business plan that guides our engagement and prior to this strategy that IFC does we also have a diagnostic tool it's called country private sector diagnostics and we do these also for all countries it's a relatively new tool we only started about four five years ago but we do all of these I mean we do it for all the countries and we are getting more or less through most of the African countries and the ones that you had under review Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana have existing country private sector diagnostics they're also online available so one can look at it and they again take into account government objectives but not just that we you know and I think that's where I think in our strategic engagement certainly on the analytic when we start on the with the analytic part with the diagnostic part we we start to sort of triangulate between different objectives we of course we look at the government objectives but we also look at what we hear from the private sector we look at what we hear from DFIs from other shareholders and you know then of course IFC has its own views because we're active investors and participants in most of these markets and have been for years so we try to triangulate not to have one view dominate that and then come up with our own assessment and that's really what drives then our strategy in terms of sectors but also areas of engagement and sometimes these things can be you know I mean often there are harmonious you know in a larger sense but then not always I mean for example if we look at Ethiopia you know you mentioned the government priorities we would probably from an IFC point of view and you'll see that in the country diagnostic add some other sectors to it I mean we put a strong emphasis for example in the case of Ethiopia on enabling factors such as energy, transport, ICT and these are areas where we see not just potential for private sector but also potential for transformation and I think that's from an IFC point of view a change in strategy it's in our internal terms it's called IFC 3.0 it's basically we sort of try to move on and I think we have successfully moved on from a traditionally more reactive process you know the normal process where you identify business opportunities and you follow them if they make commercial sense and sort of fit into the larger picture to a process where we try to actively identify and create market opportunities or markets and you know let's say in the case of Ethiopia I think there is with these enabling factors or enabling sectors there's there's a lot of opportunity for private sector engagement in these sectors but also what these sectors can accomplish I mean they're the driver of a lot of other sectors and have great potential from a development perspective going forward so that is sort of the approach that we take when it comes to engagement with countries. Let me perhaps stop here to see maybe then get more engaged on the question to see if that resonates and I'm happy to address any questions. Thank you. Great thanks. Thank you for that input. I'm just a really quick question maybe you can just keep it short for understanding so we can get to the other other panelists here but to what extent do other DFIs are they able to make use of the analysis that and strategies that IFC is is developing? So the on the world start with the World Bank side so all of the World Bank documents are available so country partnership strategies are published the the diagnostics are published on the IFC side our analytical the country private sector diagnostics are available they are online and for everyone to see the country strategies IFC's country strategies are internal documents so they're not being shared because a lot of them have then you know I mean gets more into the commercial side of things and into the business plan so so the the specific strategies are not shared. Great so I'd like to to move on to to Eric and get your perspective on these things you're working in in a development bank and have previous experience with that and also previous experience I mean you have a long academic experience as well in this space so so perhaps you have some some alternative perspectives as well on this so go ahead Eric. Okay thank you and thank you for inviting me and to give some views on this so in data as I'm working now for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which is a very new institution we are only six years old and and you know altogether less than 400 people so it's so it's but it's interesting because we you know we are very much trying to learn from the experience of others and of course I have a I spent nine years as the chief economist of the EBRD and a lot has happened during that period in terms of how we approached this issue so I'll come back to that a bit later. I think you know what's just one point to emphasize and then it becomes sort of obvious when you listen to you know the very broad program that I've seen has and all the instruments and of course the benefits of being part of the the World Bank Group as well it's a point that you know these DEFIs are very it's a very broad spectrum of of institutions and you know one one has to be a little bit careful when one put them all together and there's also some design elements that one should be conscious of so I mean some of these DEFIs are basically owned by one country and and some of them are could be bilateral which you know that they are you know they are so there is a giving country and and or giving and investing country and a recipient country and but you know I've seen and AIB are multilateral institutions and and where the countries that where we invest are owners and often very important owners of the institution and and that creates this and you know Stefan was emphasizing the the country ownership of this and I think that is extremely important to when to understand you know how these institutions work you know the multilateral DEFIs so that the element is I think it's a critical design element which has to do with also you know some of the things that DEFIs can offer in terms of sort of investor protection or management or risk or very much tied to that ownership so I think the presumption is which I think from my experience is a very real one is is that you know a government which would always be tempted you know particularly in some of the countries that you know in the developing world to to try to expropriate investors and you know not maybe necessarily you know taking specific assets by changing the rules of the game and those kind of things and and that is much more difficult I think when you have the DEFI as an investor and and the DEFI you know where you as a government are is is an important shareholder or at least a shareholder and and and that I think is something which you have in mind when we we talk about these issues about to what extent do DEFIs work with with governments or not so and that's why the institution that you cover are are different among themselves in this regard. So that's one thing that you mentioned which I think is particularly true for the smaller institution and I would say still true to some extent for AIB that you know we are trying to be opportunistic you know we you know obviously the ambition is for AIB to become you know a much larger and much more resourceful institution and you know with more capacity to do all the things that that you you call for in the in the report which I think all of that makes makes sense and I think Stefan gave some good examples on how how I see has tried to deal with this and your kind of document instruments that they have to to you know get the more informed conversation with with governments and so on. So I guess one has to be understand some of these small institutions that it's you know that it's in the beginning and particularly when you're setting up you have to be opportunistic you won't have the resources to engage on on these you know quite resource consumption or resource intensive exercises of dialogue with governments and setting up country programs and and so on and probably there is also a you know a little bit of reluctance I can say that from AIB side to to get got get too caught up in in this country program exercises and I think I think I see which you know I've followed a little bit that discussion within the I've seen when they kind of geared up in recent years you know that it wasn't without the resistance and you know that there is some you know some reason for that resistance because you can be too maybe tied up and too and and and you what particularly you want to work with the private sector part of you know these kind of country programs can become quite cumbersome and and and and complicated but having said that I think it is very important certainly that you know one tries to align with the country development plans and and with SDGs so so maybe just a comment on on you know what you go through and very nicely and even though it's not so clear exactly how you do it but you you go through all these sectors or all these three countries and look at the SDGs and and you sort of tick the boxes it's not so obvious how you do that and and you know I've just taken so Ethiopia supposedly has does not care about reducing inequality it doesn't really want to ensure sustainable consumption I agree you can understand this landlock so it doesn't care so much about conserving and and and sustainability of oceans but you know maybe it has some other marine issues that it it it it cares about and of course the the landlock nature with Ethiopia is the very fact that complicates this relationship to other countries in the region and and and so you would think also that that some of the this access to water and so on this is important for Ethiopia it also doesn't care about peaceful and and and inclusive society is justice for all and institutional development and I'm saying you know this exactly how you got to that conclusion isn't it's not so clear from from the report and and I was going to make a point about bankability I mean you set up the criteria here about you know additionality development impact and catalytic effects and I think those are very important and additionality is something particularly important when you work in private sector development you don't you don't want to crowd out private sector you want to make sure that you are additional and and you know also and so that's but the bankability issue is very important because the bankability is about what projects can be made to work in the context of individual countries and and that's also where these sort of opportunistic can come in that you know a lot of projects that governments may want to favor may not be bankable from a dfi perspective let me end with with you know two very quick comments one is that as I said at ebid I follow this quite closely so the institutional development if you say good and it was one thing that was very important part of what I tried to push and when I was there was to you know when you talk about private sector development it's important to have two legs you want to have one leg that sort of price to identify these deals help to develop the pipeline of bankable you know and projects and and making sure that there's additionality and all those things that's you know very clear I think what was less clear and and where a lot happened in in the nine years that I was at ebid was that the the policy dimension that p you know private sector development is very policy dependent and you know it's about it's about the private sector but a lot about developing the private sector is actually about developing the state sector to to you know to really make the states and a supportive and and the facilitating actor and in in a long private sector development so that was a I think the ebid that I know the best of these of of of maybe of all institutions that has that component because I would say that AIB we don't really yet have it we very much want to go there I think in the end but at the moment we don't have really the resources I'm trying to do it in in some specific cases but but in general we don't have it but but that development has I think made for example in the African context that the fact that ebid is now looking at Africa that they have those two legs is very important argument for them when they try to to go into to this country let me end just with a very quick point on on the role of devise and coordination and working with governments and it's something that I'm deeply involved in in various contexts it's it's the notion of you know how do you do this and then there's notion of country platforms it sounds very kind of a bureaucratic and and and maybe you know in a bit theoretical but it actually is very I think a very important concept that is as taking form and you know it's something that I was part of the secretariat for the so-called eminent persons group where we developed this notion of country platforms and and that was I think you know we had a lot of interesting discussions when we developed it at the time but it has now taken on I think legs of its own so the EU for example now using this very I think in an interesting way creatively in its relationship to Turkey it's going to be critical to how it works now in Ukraine it has established a country platform and and it's there are a lot of pilots around countries trying to do this and I think there's a lot to learn from that because it's the basis is to have country ownership bring everybody on board in both the the large international financial institutions but also the devise eventually the private sector and philanthropics as well on to that platform agree on certain standards of transparency, debt sustainability, procurement and ultimately SDGs and I think all that if we can get country platforms to work in a more systematic fashion I think a lot of the issues that the report is addressing could could be dealt with in a very effective way. Sorry I was a bit lengthier than I have anticipated but thank you for listening. Thanks, thanks so much Eric and I really appreciate a lot of interesting points about bankability so that these types of analysis doesn't magically create bankable projects and also this combination of looking at the policy space more broadly and how you interact and support government to support private sector investment and then of course this issue about the differences in different DFIs is very important and I think we go over to Bruno now who has the difficult task of speaking kind of on behalf of all these different DFIs and trying to say something kind of in response to this question this issue from all those different perspectives so Bruno over to you. So many thanks and first of all thank SEI and ODI for the report and for encouraging the debate since it's helped to better understand how DFI works and how DFI's contribute to the SDGs and to the Paris agreement on climate. I think the starting point is important to understand that DFIs are not development banks. Development banks have some mandates, the capacities, the tools, the instruments as well as the leverage to be engaged in policy dialogue. I will come back to this issue in a minute. DFIs as Eric has already pointed out are opportunistic and they rely on local, regional and international investors that are willing to invest in the country or in a particular sector with our support and for investment decisions development plans are not decisive. The key is a level of enabling environment so therefore it is essential that governments create the right policy environment when translating development priorities into concrete policies. For example, it's not sufficient simply to say the priorities on sustainable energy for all. It's a regulatory framework, it's not in place that allows for independent power producers. For example, we, one of our members, DEG in Kenya was the first one to invest in renewable energies and they found out there were no regulatory framework in place especially there was no PPA or purchase agreements and so they introduced as part of the due diligence process this PPA which for many, many years was being used in Kenya and replicated by other countries. So coming back to the key questions, do receiving country priorities matter? Clearly yes, but if these priorities are reflected in the appropriate policies that allow investors to invest but having said that then we at the EDFI community are quite aware that we have to be engaged much more in helping governments in creating the environment for private sector engagement because if we accept what I have said then we could not do a proper job because simply as because there's a lack of policy in place and because there's a lack of policy in place there's a lack of investors and this is especially true and more complicated when we are talking about fragile states and post-conflict contracts in the context of Africa and that is what we call upstream activities. For example, we at EDFI we have partnered with the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative and have published jointly with the Global Infrastructure Facility of Paper for policy makers on attracting private climate finance and within the DFI roundtable that is jointly chaired by IFC and EDFI we have created working groups at the country level for example in Ethiopia and Nepal where DFI identifies investment bottlenecks and then being engaged in the policy dialogue and by the way that what Steven mentioned is all these papers that are produced by the World Bank and by the IFC they're either being prepared in consultation with the EDFI members or through our executive directors and the shareholders structures so and we are using these papers quite frequently. The upstream activities that I have spoken on are designed to help MDPs and development banks to better integrate private sector related policy issues in their policy dialogue with governments and their policy related TA and loan activities. So instead of building our own capacity for small institutions and know how for rather small country portfolios we strongly believe that coordinating more and better with the multilateral development banks and the development banks is the best and the most efficient way not only for us but also by doing so by avoiding additional transaction costs for governments dealing then with a separate segment of financiers. A good example to suspect is the joint work of multilateral development banks and DFI's in context of the G7 on sustainable infrastructure finance where we focus on what needs to be done to mobilize a private sector where MDPs and development banks play a crucial role in supporting governments to create an enabling environment. We recognize that we have a crucial transformative role and we would like to do much more. One example is introduction of renewable energy in South Africa. The government decided to abolish the monopoly of ESCOM has created an regulated environment but there was no trust by the private sector and this is why in the first two and then the first three rounds of procurement and tendering mostly the financing was provided by development finance institutes and by doing so we have provided also confidence and trust in the whole system and the fourth round we were not needed anymore. That's really our transformational role and we would like to do much more especially with regard to climate and energy where we see helping governments to transform to be in line with the Paris Agreement and in particular in fragile and post-conflict countries and to this end our members have increased their advisory activities helping clients to comply with accepted international ESG standards transforming to a more climate resilient business model and to promote skills development. We could do more and therefore call on our owners to increase their risk appetite and to increase the access to guarantees and TA which are essential in order to do what you are requesting for. Thanks. Great Bruno and it's great to hear from all three of you that you've ended or kind of the solutions the types of solutions that could be employed or are being employed have been outlined by you and so I think we've got a lot of great input on that side of things and very informative. I think we want to go now to look from the country perspectives and see the other side of the equation here so I think we'll start off with Jofi Grant the CEO of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and I want to understand from your perspective how do you work with DFIs and how do you work in terms of engaging with DFIs to promote also national priorities national development priorities and how has it been working and if you have any examples it's great as well. Thank you very much and my apologies for joining later I'm actually out of location so I got the timing wrong but I'm I'm still grateful to be here so my apologies that I haven't listened to most of it indeed I'm for us in Ghana who are probably the first country to mainstream SDGs in a budgetary process of the Ministry of Finance and so what we tried to do was to create alignment between our objectives our development objectives and and our plans to ensure that they are well aligned with achievement of the SDGs but I'll just quickly probably rightful through some of the issues as well as how we engage on that on that perspective so we define in our budget what our priorities are and then we actually do engage the DFIs to see where our systems packages I must also say that for us it's a question of priorities is a question of alignment of objectives and then the question of achievement of the SDGs as a national priority so on that and that's how we engage with the DFIs but I must also say that sometimes the issues of confusion on defining the SDGs in the country perspective because let's say for example in education for us the main objective is access to education but to a DFI that is coming from a developed country they will probably be talking more of the quality end of education than just the access to education and when you have these definitional or conceptual differences then sometimes it becomes very difficult to even understand the policy objectives of the country and we see quite a lot of that in Africa and also there is a view a long-term held view that very often the DFIs are pretty patronizing and they come to tell you what they are going to do for you when you have your plan of what you want to do and what you want to achieve and it's always an issue of negotiating and bargaining for that and the terms which may not necessarily be favorable to the host nation but we do have significant support from the DFIs even from the investment promotion side where we are and I would like to cite examples where we are benefiting from technical assistance from GIZ in building an after-care service to ensure that we give them necessary supports to foreign direct investment that comes in although I recognize that DFIs normally do not engage on the on the FDI side because they mainly engage with governments and do not do direct private sector support in some cases we have seen that for example the IFC but I hope this would not be a jab but in the minds of many private sector people they would rather not deal the IFC because it takes quite a while to get you know a project passed through the IFC by which time the project is approved things would have moved on and changed so there are some it's not almost always a homogeneous relationship with the DFIs and I say that perhaps the real the real elephant in the room is the DFIs aligning more to the country perspective because there are interests that need to be aligned it's not just the fact that there is support available but the interest and the outcomes must be aligned why is the DFI going to support this is development finance so if I come to you and say that I want DFI supports to build an ICT infrastructure which to me would rather create a bigger economy for my achievement of SDGs I expect that the DFI would understand my objective and my perspective but then they'll come and say well no we don't have ICT in our list of stuff would rather do health or education and so very often we find quite a number of DFI's getting the nickers in a twist because they are either supporting programs that already have support or wants to support programs that already have support while there are other areas which the country may consider very important that have been left to the states to take care of but all in all for me it's a question of a relationship and that is why SDG 17 for us in Ghana is the most important one partnerships and linkages so where DFI's may not necessarily lend the support they can create the linkages that can create you know more channels for other DFI's to also engage and so I think because of time I wouldn't want to go into some of the details but those are some of the things that immediately pop up and secondly most DFI's would want to deal with the state with the governments but I just say that if you come to a lot and most of Africa today is very private sector focused and takes a lot of the decision making out of the politics into real demands once you go to the private sector so my appeal is that there needs to be a lot more focus on direct engagement with private sector because that is where I think that we'll get best alignment of real interest as well as results get a lot of results because when it's with the state then you have to succumb to what the state tells you or gives you us priorities. Thanks DFI we do need to move on because we're running out of time here and I want to make sure that Zeta has enough time but I mean great interesting points on the need for increased dialogue but also you're adding additional dimensions of maybe it's more about dialogue with private sector than necessarily government so that's something really interesting to hear as well. Let's move on to Zeta so that she can have the final minutes here. Thank you. I'll just go ahead and start and I just want to build on what Mjofi has pointed out because it's a real problem around particularly the DFI role in economic transformation and a sense of lethargy that I see in playing that transformation role particularly when it comes to making the sectors feasible. So one of the things I think to consider this conversation is what is a DFI role specifically in products origination through to reporting disclosure and in the project because sometimes what I see is a congregation of DFI's at the point in the investment cycle when all the hard work has been done and then we get stories about how there are no bankable projects, no project bank priorities and issues but frankly if we're not dealing with a project origination, project preparation and the actual funding requirement processes then of course those bottlenecks are going to be there and so what we see particularly on our side is that you have a sense of a sector that maybe can be quite dynamic from a private sector perspective but we will not see the attendant appetite for the technical and financial investment for origination through at least to investment preparedness and as a result when those few investment-prepared firms are ready there's an almost a competition not only among DFI's but among other finances to try and get that off the ground. So what we're seeing is almost a lopsided creation of investment possibilities and investment pipelines in many of our economies which is a problem. I think just to the point around DFI's and how I've seen the interactive government and the private sector just to say I work for a think tank and so I work with DFI's, I work with government, I work with private sector. I think definitely the technocratic consistency of government is key and not only just the policy consistency but the technocratic consistency to the application of whatever work stream has been agreed to and I think the form of governance in the country matters yeah but also the stability at the highest level of government actually forms the ability of those lead technocrats to follow through on whatever priority decisions that had been made. So I think it is for the DFI's to think through what is the process of allyship building in your priority sectors with the technocratic leads in those governments because that will have a material effect on then the end line impact you have at whatever stage because you know the leads of the technocrats may change but sometimes the layers between the leads those can be quite stable. So I think what I've not seen as much in many DFI's is a very deliberate relationship building process in the arms of government that matter particularly around policy objectives and policy consistency because that tends to affect the private sector environment that I think the other panelists have agreed to and I think just to make a final point around the brand and the relationship dynamics that DFI's have with governments I think this point has been made every DFI will have a different brand in how the government in the private sector view it and I think it would be interesting I think for DFI's to do that um test in the market to get a sense of how is their brand perceived by government by private sector because then that gives you a sense of the level of appetite to engage with you yeah so I think for government to have the brand and that sort of stuff but also their own fiscal position and the other options that they have in terms of financing but then on private sector as well you know you you'll be interfacing with that and I think I'll just close with just the the the encouragement channel of the country platforms because the lack of coordination has a real impact on bandwidth on whether it's the private sector or the government you know you're dealing with multiple DFI's everybody has their projects their methodologies their data their results it gets a bit much so I think really encouraging more coordination I think would foster a deeper pipeline and more stable investment cycles thank you great so um I think we're at time now so Mons maybe you want to close us out with with a couple of words yeah thanks yeah we we did uh had scheduled this as a tight seminar for just one hour so it's clear from the conversation that we could have gone on much longer given the importance of importance of the topic and the really crucial aspect of being a catalyst for DFI's for commercially you know viable companies and projects and and this is going to be a close important topic for us over the coming years without a doubt also within the Stockholm Environment Institute where we're not centrally focused on financial mechanisms etc but but really want to be at the forefront of bringing the sustainability aspects in us you know the science of sustainability into the financial institutions and the practices of finance so with that thank you all for joining and we do look forward to the continuation and to be able to download this work please visit the website there Stockholm Sustainable Finance Center dot com and sci.org odi.org thank you very much and have a good afternoon