On Tuesday, the eighth annual meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) concluded, with a focus on expanding public-private partnerships and access to concessional financing to finance climate projects in Africa and Egypt.
The meeting, which took place on Monday and Tuesday, was held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, and was the first in-person meeting the bank held since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.
During a panel discussion, Egypt’s Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, stated that Egypt is expecting to receive $1 billion in financing from the AIIB to support the private sector, with some of the money going towards the construction of a metro line in Alexandria and credit lines to several banks.
Maait also noted that the bank will provide a guarantee worth 3.6 billion Chinese yuan (nearly $500 million) for Egypt’s anticipated issuance of the Yuan-denominated Panda bonds, which the government plans to issue during the first half of FY2023/2024.
Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation, Rania Al-Mashat, spoke to Ahram Online, stating that the infrastructure gap in Africa is worth trillions of dollars and requires innovative financing solutions to be bridged. According to estimates by the African Development Bank (AfDB), Africa needs $170 billion annually to overhaul its infrastructure, two-thirds of which is for entirely new infrastructure, and the remainder is for maintenance.
Al-Mashat added that concessional and blended finances are crucial for developing countries and African economies to address such a gap and attain sustainability for their economies.
During the event, participants praised Egypt’s Nexus of Water, Food, and Energy (NWFE) platform and the Sharm El-Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing, released during the 27th UN Climate Change Conference in November 2022. These efforts aim to accelerate climate action in the African continent. Al-Mashat noted that NWFE includes nine priority projects to mitigate and adapt to the repercussions of climate change and works to mobilize climate investments, concessional development financing, debt swaps, and technical support through cooperation with multilateral and bilateral development partners. Since becoming a founding member of the AIIB in 2016, the bank has provided $1.3 billion in funding to public and private sector infrastructure projects in Egypt to promote sustainable and comprehensive economic development.
