Finance

19 July 2023. Despite the trend towards more financing through multilateral platforms, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) still face myriad challenges to accessing sufficient resources to achieve their sustainable development and climate objectives. With support from Canada, UN OHRLLS conducted a study in late 2022/early 2023 that directly engaged with LDC finance and planning ministries to better understand and synthesize their experience in accessing traditional loans and grants, as well as climate finance, to advance national projects and programs.

19 July 2023. This event will explore key constraints along with concrete solutions, including reforms that would be necessary in the development finance architecture, to increase flows of public and private finance to SMEs, which must play a key role in helping to accelerate economic transformation in LDCs. More information here.

1-2 December 2022. The UN SDG Investment Fair promotes high impact sustainable development projects in emerging and frontier markets. It is a platform for connecting investors, private and public institutions, and representatives from UN agencies to facilitate dealmaking in investment projects that advance the Sustainable Development Goals. 

In 2022 the programme includes specific sessions on LDC:

2 June 2022.

Information here.

On 25 May 2022 from 1500-1630 CEST, ECDPM is organising a virtual panel discussion on a renewed partnership with LDCs : ‘EU cooperation with LDCs’. ECDPM’s Alexei Jones and San Bilal are participating in this event. 

Panelists:

– H.E. Teneng Mba Jaiteh, Ambassador of the Gambia to the EU

– Luc Chevaillier, adjoint au sous-directeur du développement, secrétaire des affaires étrangères

Recording available here.

The purpose of the event was to highlight the need for blended finance and the role that donors can play through UNCDF. Potential investee companies, development finance institutions and certain donor and LDC governments participated.

Reports from the Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raise the alarm bells on a lost decade for sustainable development and a shrinking window of opportunity to address the devastating impacts of climate change. Transitioning to a green, climate resilient global economy will require the mobilization of unprecedented capital. However, developing countries, notably LDCs and African countries, continue to have the lowest access to affordable finance.

The world’s least developed countries (LDCs) face a severe financing gap that has not been sufficiently covered by official development assistance (ODA) and has been compounded by the economic crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, private capital has largely stayed on the sidelines, due  to underdeveloped financial industries and investor risk perceptions.