WASHINGTON, DC, AND CHICAGO, IL, December 15, 2022 – With increasing momentum accelerating corporate climate action and climate capital, significant investments are being made by U.S. businesses to spur climate-related entrepreneurship and enterprise in Africa. Recent initiatives include Connected Climate Entrepreneurs of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Partnerships, announced at COP26. At the same time, these investments aren’t enough to mitigate the billions needed for adaptation, resilience, and mitigation activities globally and especially across the Global South.

Telesto’s convening at the margins of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit explored opportunities for multi-tiered capital deployment, partnership pipelines, finance coalitions, and funding channels. Key ecosystem-level opportunities were showcased and explored by diverse panels of regional and global leaders, and Telesto highlighted regional climate-driven initiatives and programs to serve as scalable models.

The event showcased how a multi-sectorial approach can push for innovative and highly needed solutions to deploy on the African continent and beyond, “We are not here because these climate financing problems are easy. We are here because they are hard, and the only way we will mitigate the climate financing gap, especially in Africa, is if the leaders we have in this room forge a new approach towards cooperative climate-positive growth,“ Alex Kruzel, CEO & Founder, Telesto Strategy.

Expert panelists from the African Finance Corporation, Cambridge Industries Ltd, Bloomberg Philanthropies,  Arnergy, InfraCredit, USAID, International Finance Corporation, and Climate Resilience Consulting as well as the Sierra Leonen government shared leading innovations across blended financing, nature-based solutions, debt-for-climate swaps, the role of guarantees, green infrastructure deals and more.

As we were reminded by Thomas Debass, Managing Director / Chief Partnerships Office, U.S. Department of State Office of Global, “It takes a village to rescue a planet, it takes a village to bring an idea to fruition. All the people here are part of the village that will bring the solution.” Accordingly, the event featured a broad representation of decision-makers from over 70 different organizations across the public, private, university, and non-profit spaces. Our geographic representation was equally diverse, with over 42 countries participating.

Select takeaways:

• It takes a village to tackle climate change: A challenge as sweeping as the climate crisis cannot be addressed by fragmented factions acting in silo. In keeping with the moral of the African proverb from which it originates, it requires a multi-sectoral, -disciplinary, and -geography approach that galvanizes orchestrated action across networks of stakeholders
• Africa is not the problem but the solution: The prevailing narrative to date has been to focus on the obstacles which have impeded climate investment in Africa. It is time to flip the narrative and recognize the continent as an untapped solution to a global challenge. We must help unlock Africa’s climate investment potential and elevate its role as a global carbon sink brimming with investable opportunities and entrepreneurs
• Connective tissue, rather than capital and investable opportunities, is the missing ingredient: Globally, there is no shortage of interested capital looking to be invested nor opportunities seeking capital. Instead, it is the connective tissue across pools of capital and key decision-makers that is most absent. To develop these vital avenues, we must demystify capital for entrepreneurs and perceived risk for investors, improve ESG/sustainability-readiness on the continent, and match more climate capital with investable projects.

For full detail about our official White House side event and our ongoing climate capital work, please download our report.