Jeddah,

As part of its engagement with the COP27 process in Sharm El Sheikh, the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC), the insurance arm of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Group, is partnering with the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) to convene a High Level Panel Discussion on 12 November 2022 to highlight the role of renewable energy in Climate Change Mitigation and the experiences of multilateral financial institutions in investing in such projects and credit and political risk insurers in providing de-risking solutions.

ICIEC is the only Sharia’h-compliant multilateral credit and political risk insurer in the world and is also a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Insurance. Sustainable investment, climate action, and finance, and green finance are firmly embedded in ICIEC’s due diligence process through linking all new business and other queries with SDG and climate action indicators.

Africa Finance Corporation is a pan-African Multilateral Development Financial Institution with the mandate to provide pragmatic solutions to Africa’s infrastructure deficit and challenging operating environment. It has a large energy footprint in Africa.

Despite the fact that the African continent is blessed with immense renewable energy potential in the wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and geothermal energy, it suffers from structural Energy Poverty that poses a systemic obstacle to socio-economic development and sustainable growth.

Climate Change mitigation is a fundamental pillar of Climate Action and is predicated on replacing or substituting power generation through hydrocarbons with the generation of renewable energy. This transition to clean energy is complex given that several African countries are dependent on fossil fuels for their energy needs, revenues, and their development agendas.

By bringing together the long experience of ICIEC’s risk mitigation and credit enhancement solutions and AFC’s infrastructure financing, the aim of the Panel Discussion is to highlight the structural challenges and the role that de-risking combined with blended finance can play in accelerating Africa’s just transition to clean energy.

Key issues to be addressed in the Panel Discussion include case studies of various renewables projects in Africa, highlighting the business and development case for blended finance coupled with de-risking solutions, ICIEC’s experience with renewables projects, especially in solar and wind energy, and the challenges and lessons learned from renewable power generation in Africa.

The panel participants will include Mr. Sameh Shenouda, Chief Investment Officer, AFC, Ms. Soraya Sebti, Senior Manager, Sustainability and CSR, Bank of Africa, Dr. Salih Suwarelzahab, Chairman of the Climate Action Taskforce, ICIEC and BADEA representative. Mr. Oussama Kaissi, Chief Executive Officer of ICIEC, commented: “With an estimated Climate Action funding gap of US$1.35 trillion, blended finance, which combines concessional funding with commercial financing, is the only solution to addressing Africa’s renewable energy needs. ICIEC offers various tools covering political risk insurance, partial risk guarantees, and export credit guarantees that directly and indirectly mitigate various types of investment risks, including political, policy, regulatory, credit, and technology risks. ICIEC has a growing footprint in underwriting renewable energy projects in Egypt, Senegal, UAE, and Türkiye.”