On the second day of COP26, Heads of States launched new partnerships that will catalyze finance and climate solutions in Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and help half a billion farmers to implement regenerative farming practices this decade.

According to a media release by the UNFCCC, the partnerships would include the following:

• Launch of Africa Green Finance Coalition to attract green capital via policy reform
• New renewable energy infrastructure finance facility by Bank of America for Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean
• Launch of Regen10 to help 500 million farmers to move to regenerative food systems this decade across 50% of world food production

The mobilization of action and scaling-up of finance for these geographies is critical to advancing the climate action agenda.

The first partnership to be announced is the Africa Green Finance Coalition (AGFC) – a continent-wide collaboration – to spur the trillions of green investment needed to transform Africa’s economy by accelerating green finance policy and regulatory reform to attract private capital at scale, both from international and domestic investors.

Ayaan Zainab Adam, CEO Africa Capital Partners, said: “Africa has a $2.3 trillion investment gap in its core infrastructure which must be addressed. The Africa Green Finance Coalition should help get much needed capital flowing to climate resilient and low carbon infrastructure in strategic sectors such as energy, transport, logistics agriculture  and sustainable and low carbon mining and manufacturing. This initiative will helpfully facilitate investment transactions across multiple countries requiring blended finance structures.â€_x009d_

Secondly, Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, announced a multi-jurisdictional and multi-asset financing facility to scale public and private finance for climate solutions & resilient infrastructure in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean. 

This financing facility aims to invest in approximately 800 megawatts of new wind, solar and EV charging infrastructure projects in Caribbean Small Island Developing States. 

This Facility is announced alongside the Climate Finance Access Network – launching in eight Pacific Islands (Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) which are the first countries to receive climate finance advisors, aimed at building financial capacity and developing project pipelines across islands in the region.

The third and final partnership to be presented to world leaders is Regen10, a bold new platform to achieve regenerative food systems this decade across 50% of world food production. Regen10 will work with over 500 million farmers to apply regenerative production methods, while simultaneously ensuring roughly $60bn per year is deployed to finance the transition to reverse nature loss in line with the Paris Agreement.

The partnership will drive convergence of existing food and farming sector initiatives, and scale up collective action, by bringing together farmers along with businesses, investors, NGOs and policymakers to accelerate system change.