July 4, 2024 (Geneva, Switzerland) - CAFI is expanding its innovative finance through a new call for expressions of interest to identify capital acceleration providers. The call aims to lead to developing new partnerships and new types of blended finance solutions, providing funding to private sector stakeholders to guide their investments and expertise towards CAFI’s goals.
Since its creation in 2015, CAFI has gone through considerable changes in scope and level of ambition. Initially a smaller initiative with few donors, CAFI now includes 10 governmental or inter-governmental donors in its Executive Board, which have pooled an increasingly large amount of funds. The number and type of implementing partners has expanded, along with the range of projects being implemented.
CAFI has also been able to experiment with innovative finance through multi-sectoral projects, especially in the DRC. These projects have enabled CAFI to identify how to best support sustainable development across the region. In order to improve accountability, efficiency, performance and ultimately the impact of the fund, CAFI wishes to expand the types of activities implemented, the types of implementing partners, and expand the role of the private sector in CAFI operations.
At the end of 2023, CAFI launched a Private Sector Investment Facility worth $100 million along with a call for expressions of interest to encourage private sector engagement. The overwhelming response to the call has resulted in a pipeline of projects in development in 2024 with a wide variety of private sector entities. This new Call for Expressions of Interest aims to identify potential eligible implementing partners able to offer blended finance and innovative solutions for private sector and social enterprises, thereby complementing and expanding upon the private sector engagement already initiated in 2023.
CAFI is looking for a variety of types of innovative financing, such as for-profit investments, de-risking through blended finance, grants, or other modalities. As included in this Call for EoI, potential mechanisms could include investments, loans, grants or other instruments provided directly to private companies; support through development finance institutions (DFIs) or other public intermediaries; funding the enabling environment; and encouraging blended finance with private capital to increase efficiency of donor resources. Expansion of successful results-based payments supported by CAFI, such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES), may also be proposed.
The Call for EoI, for which further details are found in the "Resources" section below, is open to non-profit organizations, including non-governmental (NGOs) and inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). This call closes on August 12, 2024. Interested parties are encouraged to review the documents below and send any questions to eoi.cafi@undp.org. They are also invited to consult this page regularly, as it will be updated with questions and answers received.
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