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GGGI and the Ministry of Finance of Ethiopia under the Green Climate Fund (GCF) readiness programme organized two capacity building trainings

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and Ministry of Finance (MoF), under the Green Climate Fund (GCF) readiness programme, organized two capacity-building workshops in Adama, Ethiopia. The first workshop, GCF Fiduciary Standards, was held from October 19 to 21, 2020. The second workshop, Training on Green Climate Fund Concept note Development for CRGE Ministries, was held from November 09 to 11, 2020. The workshops were attended by relevant government experts.

The workshops are expected to enhance the participants’ understanding of climate change; climate finance; investment criteria of GCF; GCF concept note development; elements of Fiduciary Standards of GCF and other related topics.

Ethiopia is implementing its’ Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) Strategy which is serving as an overarching roadmap that guides the overall development of the country within the frameworks of Green Growth. To support the implementation of the priorities set out in the CRGE Strategy and Investment Plans, the Government set up a national financial mechanism, called the Ethiopia CRGE Facility, to mobilize, access, and combine domestic and international, public and private sources of finance to support the institutional building and implementation of Ethiopia’s CRGE Strategy.

The emission reduction targets set in the country’s national plans also require resources that have to be mobilized from domestic and international sources. Likewise, strengthening the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities and their environment requires a substantial amount of financial resources that should be unlocked from all available sources. Resource mobilization efforts should be supported through tailored trainings that improve skills of preparing bankable funding proposals and concept notes.

GCF is one of the available sources of climate finance that can be approached to unlock financial resources for climate change adaptation and mitigation projects. To mobilize resources from GCF it is important to understand the key process of developing project proposals and concept notes. Experience suggests that experts responsible for resource mobilization lack the basic skills on specific requirements. Because of this limitation, the experts either develop concept notes that are poorly aligned with the guidelines and requirements or do not attempt them at all.

Through its readiness support program, the GCF provides capacity-building support targeted to strengthen institutional and technical capacities. Ethiopia’s GCF readiness support is intended to strengthen MoF in its institutional, project management and delivery capacities, including pipeline development, review, appraisal and monitoring and evaluation. The readiness support is also aimed at further strengthening MoF’s systems for environmental and social safeguards (ESS) and ensuring gender equity and equality. Through this support, the readiness project ultimately aims to upgrade the accreditation level of the MoF.  GGGI is an implementing partner and is executing the project in close collaboration with the NIE and the NDA.

As part of the readiness support program of Ethiopia, capacity building trainings were provided to experts working at the federal and regional offices of the CRGE Units on project development, result-based management, gender, and safeguard systems. These workshops are a continuation of the capacity building support aimed at improving the skills of experts on understanding GCF’s fiduciary standards as well as the development of concept notes that can be submitted to the GCF.

The capacity building training on Climate Change, GCF, and Fiduciary Standards targeted CRGE Units of both Federal and Regional offices. The capacity building training on preparing concept notes to be submitted to GCF gathered focal points and senior experts of CRGE ministries that work in the agriculture, finance, climate change, environment and forest, energy and water, transport, urban development and housing, and industry sectors.

Participants appreciated the training topics and content of the two workshops. As part of the next steps, participants were advised to share the training materials on fiduciary standards to finance officers and also organize similar training at the regional and world level. They can also request support from the CRGE Facility. It was indicated that the GCF readiness team and the resource person will support sector ministries to develop the current draft concept notes into a more coherent concept note fulfilling the requirements of the GCF template before the write-up workshop in January 2021.