The Green Climate Fund will chart new thinking on boosting Africa’s industrialisation in climate-sensitive ways while attending the African Development Bank’s annual meeting which opens today.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) is holding its five-day yearly gathering in the Republic of Korea, the host country of GCF.

GCF will be present at the event, held in the southern port city of Busan. GCF staff will meet with a wide range of heads of state, private sector and civil society representatives, and others gathered around the margins of the AfDB annual meeting – which the bank says is aimed at accelerating industrialisation across the African continent.

Climate change features as one of the major themes of the discussions - designed to boost African economic prospects and to leapfrog regional countries into higher value chains of production. Africa must “move rapidly to industrialize, with value addition to everything that it produces,” AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said in the leadup to the bank’s annual meeting.

Ayaan Adam, director of GCF’s Private Sector Facility, will join a discussion panel this evening considering the relevance of climate finance and financial institutions in Africa's Industrialization.

On Friday morning, GCF Executive Director Howard Bamsey will participate in a high-level session addressing how to direct finance streams towards funding climate change mitigation and adaptation.

AfDB is a key GCF partner. Approved as a GCF Accredited Entity in March 2016, AfDB is working on a series of mitigation and adaptation initiatives at the national and regional levels to enhance African countries' access to GCF resources.

The two organisations are currently collaborating on a project supporting the Government of Zambia catalyse investment in the renewable energy sector to boost electricity generation and diversify Zambia’s energy mix. This project, approved by the GCF Board at its most recent meeting in February this year, is funded by a GCF contribution of USD 52.5 million and AfDB financing worth USD 51.5 million.

GCF is working with AfDB to explore further climate finance opportunities.

AfDB is holding its annual meeting in the Republic of Korea to coincide with the 2018 Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation (KOAFEC) Conference. AfDB has identified Korea’s rapid economic growth since the 1960s as a model African countries can study in moving towards higher value-added industrialisation.

GCF will have an information booth in the exhibition centre, which is open from Tuesday until Friday during the AfDB meeting.