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The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program is calling for partnerships

Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program - climateaction

The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program is calling for partnerships

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is calling for partnerships for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP).

GCA works as a solutions broker to accelerate action and support adaptation solutions.

Through its global, regional, and country programs, as well as its knowledge and advocacy work, GCA has developed unique advantages to accelerate action on the adaptation agenda globally, focusing more on the Africa region where the need for adaptation is great.

Following broad stakeholder engagements and with voiced demand from Africa, the GCA and the African Development Bank joined forces to develop the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP).

Actualizing the political vision of the Africa Adaptation Initiative, the AAAP is an Africa-owned and Africa-led response to the continent’s expressed needs and priorities to reduce its vulnerabilities to climate change and accelerate adaptation.

The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) is the foremost comprehensive adaptation program on the continent and has been endorsed by African nations and leaders as the preferred vehicle to implement adaptation.

The program aims to mobilize $25 billion in financing to support Africa’s adaptation plans over five years.

The AAAP will support all African countries in designing and implementing transformational adaptation of their economies and post-COVID recovery development paths in four action areas (pillars):

1. Climate-Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security

This pillar is aimed at providing and accelerating climate-smart digital technology and data-driven agricultural and financial services for, at least, 30 million farmers in Africa.

This will result in increased food security for at least 10 million people across 26 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by 2025.

GCA is seeking partnerships to support knowledge gathering and the conduct of agricultural analytics, investment in digital agricultural innovations, the mainstreaming of climate-smart digital agriculture into agriculture investment projects, and last-mile capacity development.

2. African Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator

This pillar is aimed at accelerating investment at national and city levels for climate-resilient urban and rural infrastructure to, at least, $7 billion and integrating resilience in up to 50% (by value) of new infrastructure projects by 2025.

This will be carried out in critical sectors like water, transport, energy, and waste management.

GCA is seeking partnerships around climate analytics, structuring investment models for nature-based solutions, climate-resilient infrastructure diagnostic assessments, Public-Private Partnerships for adaptation and resilience, national infrastructure policy assessment, and assessments of water regulatory frameworks.

3. Empowering Youth for Entrepreneurship and Job Creation

This pillar is aimed at promoting sustainable job creation for one million youth directly via education, entrepreneurship, and innovation for action on climate adaptation and resilience in Africa while also enabling job creation for adaptation in 50% of African countries via policy reforms.

GCA is seeking partnerships to support gender mainstreaming, youth and adaptation-focused policy uptake, digital skills for jobs, climate adaptation-focused capacity building, and pre-incubation, which will help in realizing the goals of this pillar.

4. Innovative Financial Initiatives for Africa

This pillar is aimed at making notable headway in closing the adaptation financing gap, enhancing access to existing finance, and mobilizing new private sector investment by designing and demonstrating mechanisms that utilize public sector finance to leverage private investment.

GCA is seeking partnerships to support the building-in of resilient financial ecosystems in African countries, to support the adoption of Adaptation and Resilience debt products and the integration of climate adaptation metrics and taxonomy in the investment units of national and subnational entities, for blended finance solutions for adaptation investments, for the development of Green Banks and National Climate Change Funds, for the integration of climate-related risks in financial decision-making, and for the popularization of Disaster Risk Financing mechanisms.

Requirements

To increase adaptation in these four pillars, in-depth and on-the-ground understanding is required to ensure that delivery reflects the realities and contexts of the African continent.

In this context, GCA is calling for partnerships through which the upstream activities of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program will be delivered.

Partnerships under the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program will take different forms covering national, regional, and continental initiatives. They will include the joint delivery of projects and initiatives to be undertaken under the AAAP, sub-grantee arrangements, common knowledge generation activities, research and policy collaborations, etc.

Partners will be expected to specifically provide details on their core areas of activity and intended areas of collaboration on the AAAP.

Selection criteria

Partners will be selected against their ability to support the work of one or more pillars of the AAAP, clearly identified areas of impactful collaboration, and due diligence processes are undertaken to establish institutional credibility and suitability for collaboration.

GCA will conduct an ongoing impartial assessment of partner requests but can only provide responses to successfully selected partners. Proposals will be evaluated on a quarterly basis.

GCA will consider potential partners that meet the criteria in the following, non-exhaustive list:

  •  Demonstrated support of the principles of advancing adaptation and climate action set out in the Paris Agreement;
  • Active engagement in partnerships and initiatives with, inter alia, United Nations, intergovernmental, national, subnational, industry or sectoral non-governmental and other related organizations in support of climate, environmental and/or social causes;
  • Demonstrated support of the principles of sustainable development, including social and environmental corporate responsibility;
  • Regular monitoring and evaluation reporting
  • Compliance with recognized environmental and social standards.

Exclusionary criteria 

The GCA will not engage with any entity whose public image is severely compromised by past activity or advocacy in one of the categories below, or in other areas which may be deemed, at any given time, to reflect negatively on the GCA:
  • Systematic failure to demonstrate support of the core values of the GCA and its commitment to climate action and adaptation;
  • Illicit behavior, including organized crime, trafficking, corruption, terrorism, or violations of internationally agreed on sanctions.

Benefits

GCA is the only global solutions broker on adaptation and resilience. GCA is collaborating with the African Development Bank, other Multilateral Development and Finance Institutions, and bilateral organizations and philanthropies to advance the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program.

The African Development Bank and other key project financiers in Africa will address investment needs and GCA will provide upstream technical support.

Grants are available for not-for-profit institutions partners to deliver activities in support of the program’s objectives.

Eligibility

Only African not-for-profit institutions and organizations that have an excellent track record of building climate change resilience and adaptation initiatives in Africa across the four core areas of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program can submit their collaboration proposal.

The organization must be a not-for-profit entity that has been active for at least 10 years and have the capacity to manage the volume of funds allocated. The organization must prove its ability to implement the activities agreed upon in an efficient and effective manner, and demonstrate a gender-sensitive approach.

How to apply

Interested partners should respond with a brief letter of interest outlining specific potential areas of collaboration and they should provide evidence of the following:

  • Evidence of registered not-for-profit entity status with at least 10 years of experience in the subject areas listed in this call for partnerships.
  • A clear specification of the pillar(s) of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program that you are interested in collaborating on.
  • Written evidence summarizing past results and impacts made in the specific area of focus where collaboration is suggested.

The brief letter of interest and annexes reflecting the evidence listed above should be sent to:

Amanda Archibong
Senior Programs Officer, AAAP, Regional Office for Africa
[email protected].

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