Mobilizing Private Capital for Climate Finance

---

Moderator: Mr. James Mwangi

---

The Summit closes on the question: who pays for Africa's climate transition, and on what terms?

Public and concessional finance alone cannot close the continent's adaptation and clean-energy financing needs — mobilizing private capital at scale, and de-risking it enough that it actually flows, is the harder and more urgent task.

This panel brings together five perspectives on that task: a multilateral trade institution working to connect African firms to markets and finance (ITC), a pan-African infrastructure investor and project developer (Africa50), a UN capital-mobilization body that blends concessional and commercial capital in the least-developed markets (UNCDF), and an entrepreneur operating directly in Central African resources and renewable energy (SOKIMO / Ati Congo Groupe). Moderated by James Mwangi from Africa Climate Ventures which also have a platform built specifically to organize African-led climate finance and policy, the conversation is meant to end the Summit with a practical answer, not a communiqué: what would it actually take to move private capital into African climate projects at the pace and scale required.

Key discussion themes

1. The bankability gap. What actually keeps African climate projects from being investment-ready at the scale private capital needs — is it project preparation, risk perception, currency exposure, or something structural in how deals get built?

2. Blended and concessional capital as a lever, not a subsidy. Where should DFI, UN and multilateral money be used specifically to pull in private capital — first-loss tranches, guarantees, currency hedging — rather than substituting for it?

3. What an African-led platform changes. CAP-A was built on the premise that climate finance and policy need African institutions setting the agenda, not just receiving it. What has that actually changed in how deals get structured or which projects get funded?

4. The view from the ground. From mining and renewable-energy entrepreneurship in the DRC to pan-African infrastructure delivery — what do practitioners closest to the capital deployment see that policy conversations tend to miss?

5. Closing round. One thing each panelist would ask Nordic private investors to do differently, starting this week, to move more private capital into African climate finance.