Some climate finance experts say that Nigeria and other African countries can attract trillions of naira from the climate finance market with the proper structure and right policies.
The experts spoke in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
NAN reports that climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing—drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing—that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change.
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The Chief Executive Officer, PUTRRU, Monica Maduekwe, said the right policies and strategies could bring more climate finance to Nigeria and Africa at large.
PUTRRU is Africa’s frontline platform interfacing between the Development Finance Institutions, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and the energy market in Africa
Maduekwe said that the reason Nigeria and other African countries were short of climate finance was due to poor policies.
“As the world grapples with the urgency of climate action, the spotlight is once again on global efforts to finance renewable energy projects, particularly in developing nations like Nigeria.
“At the last COP28 experts and stakeholders gathered to address the growing disparity between the pledged size of climate financing and the actual inflows for countries facing the impacts of climate change, such as Nigeria.”
She said that, over the last two decades, the global renewable energy sector had attracted approximately 3 trillion dollars in investments. Maduekwe said that Africa received a mere two per cent, as cited by the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina.
“One of the key challenges identified at the macro level is the scarcity of capital, because in the global landscape, capital tends to flow to certain regions, favouring Latin America and Southeast Asia, while Africa lags behind.
“A successful project development requires a thorough study of investment opportunities, risk identification and mitigation, clear partnerships (both public and private), and a well-defined financial structure,” she said.
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On her part, Amie Alex-Irobi of the National Action Committee on the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (NAC-AfCFTA), said that Nigeria’s industrialisation would need huge capital and hoped that climate finance would be attracted into the economic sectors to realise the objectives of Nigeria in the AfCFTA.
Alex-Irobi said that NAC-AfCFTA’ s mission to bolster economic sectors in Nigeria, particularly in ensuring available, reliable, and affordable energy, aligned with the strategy of PUTTRU in trade and investment facilitation.
