BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE – The Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and supported by Ernst and Young, is seeking to identify climate change related projects from the Agriculture sector.
This was announced by the Government, through its social media pages yesterday.
According to the information published the projects will be advanced to mobilise climate finance from different sources such as the Green Climate Fund.
“This initiative is part of the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI) by the African Union, funded by the Green Climate Fund in 23 countries”.
It aims to establish more resilient agriculture in Africa. Its first phase, which began in June 2022, will consist of developing a tool for modelling climate risks, their impacts, solutions and policies to be implemented, and will lead to the identification of projects to support these solutions,” read the full statement posted on their social media platform Facebook.
Meanwhile, a booklet explaining the project further mentioned that the vast majority of African citizens depend on subsistence agriculture, which is significantly impacted by fragile economies, cyclically by the war in Ukraine, and more structurally by climate change.
Agricultural activity and associated productivity have declined in Africa in recent decades, largely due to droughts and other climatic hazards that have hit countries.
“The African Adaptation Initiative (AAI) programme, initiated by the African Union, and funded by the Green ClimateFund (GCF) in 23 countries, aims to establish more resilient agriculture in Africa.
Its first phase, started in June 2022, will consist of developing a tool for modelling climate risks, their impacts, solutions and policies to be implemented, and will lead to the identification of projects to support these solutions,” reads the booklet in part.
This call for proposals aims to identify a list of 20 projects, then to select 10 pilot projects with a high impact onstrengthening the resilience of agricultural, livestock and fisheries activities on the one hand, and low-carbonenergy carbonenergy production for sustainable agriculture on the other, in each of the 23 countries involved.
The challenge is to aggregate an inclusive dynamic with all the actors of the agricultural sector and renewable energies for agriculture.
The winners of this call for projects, as part of phase 2 of this program, will receive free technical assistance to mobilise private financing under bankable projects, or public funding from bilateral and multilateral climate finance institutions.
Nature of projects and expectations of project leadersProjects should be in line with the country’s National Determined Contribution (NDC), the national adaptation strategy, and the national adaptation plan, as well as the results of risk, impact, solution and policy modelling for resilient and low-carbon agriculture.
The production of agricultural products from the fishing and livestock industries as well as the production of low carbon energy for agriculture will constitute the scope of this call for proposal.
The projects more particularly targeted by this call for proposal will meet three main obligations:
• Size: Medium and large (minimum expenditure: $1 million);
• Maturity: High (implemented within a maximum period of 6 months based on a socio-economic and legalfeasibility study, a business plan, and a robust level of operational readiness);
• Duration:The pilot phase of impact assessment of the results should not exceed 3 years.
They may be carried out independently by: public institutions, private organisations (companies, business groups, consortium), an NGO or members of civil society.
Eligibility criteria
To be eligible, applications for the call for proposals must meet the following obligations:
• Administrative completeness:The file must be complete, including all the required annexes;
• Expenditure threshold and maturity: The project must meet the constraints indicated in the ” Nature of projects and expected from project leaders” section, including the amount of eligible expenses and the expected level of maturity;
• Non-exclusion criteria: The project must meet the national non-exclusion criteria (fiscal, social andadministrative compliance);
