About the Africa Climate Change Fund

The Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF or the Fund) is a multi-donor trust fund that compliments the African Development Bank’s (The Bank) target of tripling its climate financing and advancing Africa’s climate resilience.

The ACCF was established in 2014 first as a bilateral thematic trust fund with an initial contribution of €4.725 million from Germany through its international development agency, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ). ACCF was converted to a multi-donor trust fund in 2017 with contributions from the Governments of Flanders, Belgium and Italy. The Global Affairs Canada and Government of Quebec joined the Fund in 2020. The Global Center on Adaptation, Governments of Austria and Ireland joined in 2022.

The Fund was created to provide small grants to African governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), regional institutions, and private sector to support African countries to transition towards climate-resilient, low-carbon development.

The current size of the Fund is $40.64 million. Since its inception, the ACCF’s Governing Committees have approved 32 projects, with 9 projects completed and 2 projects cancelled.

Vision

ACCF’s vision is to continue playing a significant role in supporting African countries to enhance their resilience to climate change impacts and to contribute to the Bank’s ambitious goal of tripling its share of climate change-related investments.

The ACCF supports projects through competitive Calls for Proposals and a Demand Driven Window, helping African countries access climate finance, update climate strategies, and implement adaptation initiatives. The Fund prioritizes gender equality and climate resilience, and its scope was extended to 2027 to align with Africa’s evolving needs and the Glasgow Climate Pact

Objectives

Building capacity of African stakeholders on climate change and scale up access to climate finance 1

Supporting RMCs to integrate climate change and green growth into national strategies and policies (NDCs Revisions, Long term Strategies)2

Co-financing projects and programs to advance climate resilient and low carbon development3

Contributing to the implementation of the Bank’s Climate Change & Green Growth Strategic Framework4

Areas of Intervention

Access to climate finance and readiness Access to climate finance and readiness
Climate change policies and strategies Climate change policies and strategies
Institutional capacity building Community-led climate action
Gender equality and climate resilience Addressing Gender Inequality in Climate Action Projects

Eligible Beneficiaries

The Bank Departments can submit proposals directly, or work with eligible external beneficiaries to support them in preparing high quality proposals. Internal
African governments:
Ministries departments and agencies, sub-national, local and municipal governments.
African research institutions:
Institutes must be legally registered in an African country and must have demonstrated credibility and track record.
African Funds:
Funds must be legally registered in an African country.
African regional organizations:
Intergovernmental Organizations, Regional organizations from the public sector UN Agencies may be considered on a case-by case basis.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs):
Legally registered in Africa are eligible and in operational for more than 3 years.
Private sector:
Support high demonstration-scale activities where they are first of-a-kind, sub-commercial and require significant development work and are not commercially viable in the host country.
External