AfDB supports Climate Change resilience in three countries with $17.8m

Following the approval March of $18.6 million for three water and sanitation projects, the African Development Bank (AfDB), has renewed its support for climate change resilience in Madagascar, Benin and Angola.

As a result of that approval too, the three African countries have been able to access $17.8 million of adaptation finance in the form of grants from the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) during the second quarter of 2013.

Specifically, the Council of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), which is hosted under the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has approved financing for three agriculture and natural resource management projects in the three countries, which aim at increasing their adaptation capacities.

Representing a major step forward in the engagement of the African Development Bank to support to make African countries resilient to climate change, Madagascar will receive $6.2 million out of the total amount, to promote climate change adaptation by ensuring that agricultural water infrastructure planned with African Development Fund support is modified, so as to be resilient in the face of climate change.

The island state will also through its climate change adaptation programme, ensure that the vulnerability of the agriculture catchment to cyclones and flooding is reduced, while local agricultural livelihoods are adapted to climate change through water management and health interventions.

For Benin which receives $7.2 million, the grant will allow flood control and climate resilience of agriculture infrastructures in Oueme Valley. Under this project, flooding risk mapping and climate resilient agriculture infrastructures like dykes will be promoted along with flood resistant grain storage systems.

Angola also benefits from $4.4 million to increase the scope of its four pilot demonstration centres to climate change technology for sustainable development.

The LDCF was established under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to finance the preparation and implementation of National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs).

By Edmund Smith-Asante