Technical assistance for implementing Paris goals

Policy level, climate-related technical assistance

The AfDB launched and continues to host the secretariat of the Africa NDC Hub. This platform is designed to support countries with translating their “NDC into actions, without neglecting their development priorities” as well as to support an increase in the ambition of NDCs, where possible. 

Moreover, since 2018 the Bank has been working as a partner with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) on the Green Growth Index. This index tracks country progress in achieving sustainability targets including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Paris Agreement, and Aichi Biodiversity Targets. The project intends to help countries identify gaps in current national plans, and better align these with achieving sustainability targets. To this end, the AfDB and the GGGI jointly produced the Africa Green Growth Readiness Assessment in 2022, to guide NDC and SDG implementation in Africa.

Other technical assistance

The AfDB has an extensive technical assistance offering across sectors that goes beyond its broader policy level NDC support. For example, in the energy sector, the SE4ALL Africa Hub (which the AfDB hosts) provides both policy support to establish country and regional level energy plans, and technical assistance to support achieving the SE4ALL objectives. Furthermore, through the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa and African Climate Technology Centre, the Bank facilitates technical and implementation assistance, to remove market barriers, build robust project pipelines and support the development of green mini-grids.

The AfDB has also partnered with the World Bank and UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to establish the Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility (AFRI-RES). The AFRI-RES is designed as an “Africa-based networked centre of technical competence and excellence” intended to support capacity building among regional institutions to ensure that infrastructure investments are resilient to climate change. The network is based on four components:

1. project level technical assistance
2. training, outreach, and advocacy
3. development of standards, guidelines and best practice
4. a climate knowledge portal.

Also of note is the Bank’s African Natural Resources Management and Investment Centre. This non-lending department of the Bank is mandated to support countries with maximising the development outcomes gleaned from their natural resource endowments. It does so through providing practical knowledge, expertise, advisory services, technical assistance, and advocacy support for projects and programmes regarding natural resource management (both renewable and non-renewable).

Recommendations:

• Despite an extensive technical assistance offering in the energy sector, it is unclear to what extent energy subsidy reform is a key part of advice for countries. This is something which the AfDB could be well placed to integrate in its country level TA provision, beginning by identifying which member countries would benefit the most from energy subsidy reform.[1]
• The AfDB should consider adopting a context-specific formal exclusion on technical assistance for fossil fuel expansion, at minimum covering coal and upstream oil and gas. This should be specifically applied to activities supporting the expansion of fossil fuel industries, so as to not preclude technical assistance activities in this sector with a clear and credible just transition focus.

[1] This selection would consider key factors such as potential emissions reductions, importance to the national energy transition, and potential benefits to fiscal space and distributional considerations.