Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Climate impacts are materializing far faster than expected twenty years ago. With agriculture as the backbone of Africa’s economy, climate change is particularly affecting the continent. It reduces crop productivity, with yield losses of some crops, for example wheat – a staple in many parts of Africa - projected at up to 21%.

At the same time, Africa as the world’s youngest continent has made great efforts in driving the global climate and adaptation agenda. Climate resilient agriculture and clean energy are prioritized in over 70% of African NDCs.

The Green Climate Fund is the world’s largest climate fund and allocates over half of its resources to finance transformative climate adaptation initiatives. GCF has prioritised climate action in Africa, investing over $1 billion of its own resources and leveraging an additional $1.4 billion for 44 adaptation related projects.

The GCF is committed to continuing to prioritize adaptation investments in Africa to enable the continent to achieve its climate ambitions. Notaby, we are working withour partners on a four- pronged approach to finance climate adaptation in Africa:

• Fostering integrated planning and policy development to leverage synergies between climate adaptation, mitigation, sustainable development and Covid-19 recovery measures;
• Catalysing climate adaptation innovations in policy, institutions, business, technology, and finance.
• Mobilizing greater private sector investment into adaptation actions through blended
• finance and support to financial institutions; and
• Developing tools and knowledge to mainstream climate risks into investment decision-making such as new valuation methodologies for climate-resilient infrastructure.