Devex Invested: The accountability edition

Welcome to the accountability edition, in which we examine whether governments, donors, and unique funding efforts are measuring up to their goals. In the hot seat this week are Prosper Africa and the Green Climate Fund. There are also a few new efforts on my radar: a much-delayed education outcomes fund in Ghana, and a proposal to boost World Bank funding using Special Drawing Rights. + Happening soon: At 12 p.m. ET (5 p.m. GMT), we'll be hosting our Devex Leader Roundtable: The Women CEOs Edition. Register now to be part of the conversation on feminist leadership, the future of work, and how to navigate an executive career in male-dominated spaces. Will Prosper Africa prosper? African leaders want more investment and trade. The Biden administration has said it wants to boost both on the continent. Prosper Africa is a U.S. government initiative with a $100 million budget designed to do just that. Can it deliver? The initiative struggled to find its footing after an anemic start in 2018, and experts tell me they are still skeptical. Its success has been limited by confusion about its mission, a lack of funding, and a lack of focus on the right priorities, they say. But with its purpose in the political spotlight, Prosper Africa is hiring staff, expanding outreach to businesses, and spreading the word about what it has to offer. It’s also helping companies close deals — including Cropsafe, a Nigerian company tackling post-harvest losses, and Yemaachi, a Ghanaian biotech firm. Both were able to secure financing with Prosper Africa’s help. It has also helped American companies expand their supply chains on the continent. Read: Can Prosper Africa actually boost trade and investment in Africa? (Pro) + Start your 15-day free trial of Devex Pro today to access all our exclusive reporting and analysis. Let that money flow Today’s climate finance systems are “obsolete,” and they’re slowing progress on averting a greater climate crisis, the outgoing head of the United Nations’ multibillion-dollar climate fund for low-income countries tells my colleague Shabtai Gold. Wealthy donors need to ensure that funding channels are more “flexible,” better suited to the needs of low-income nations, and importantly, fulfill the $100 billion annual climate funding pledge they made over a decade ago, says Green Climate Fund Executive Director Yannick Glemarec. He will step down in April. GCF has struggled to get donors to commit funding. Meanwhile, it has been slow to actually get its funds out the door, though Glemarec tells Shabtai that it has accelerated and simplified the process since he took the helm in 2019. Read: Fix 'obsolete' climate funding or risk disaster, warns UN fund chief Not-so-hidden treasure What if there was a giant, untapped treasure trove that the World Bank could mine for tens of billions of dollars in new, low-cost lending within the next 12 months? And what if it could make use of Special Drawing Rights – the reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund, many of which are languishing in central banks and treasuries? Enter the brainchild of two experts. They propose that the World Bank could issue a set of bonds denominated in SDRs, a move that could double the size of the bank’s primary lending wing and give high-income countries a workaround to existing barriers in using those SDRs to support low-income countries. Shabtai has the details on this fairly technical proposal. All it will take is what he calls “financial wizardry” — so we’ll see if the bank and its shareholders take up the idea. Read: How the World Bank can turn dormant SDRs into billions in new lending (Pro) ICYMI: SDRs and the RST — Explaining the acronyms of the IMF's currency system (Pro) Gender gap 151 years --— That is how long it will take to close the economic participation gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum. In a recent survey of women entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries, 89% reported that the cost-of-living crisis and high inflation had negatively impacted their business. Nearly half of them reported challenges accessing finance and experiencing discrimination, according to the survey conducted by the Cherie Blair Foundation released today ahead of International Women’s Day. On the Hill The U.S. House Financial Services Committee unanimously approved a bill that would bring the World Bank’s lending for the lowest-income countries — the International Development Association — under the same rules as other lending done by the bank. The move, if approved by the U.S. Congress and signed into law, could save the bank more than $600 million in borrowing costs over five years. The savings would come from exempting IDA from a number of reporting requirements. World Bank President David Malpass tweeted his praise for the bipartisan effort, saying it will allow IDA to issue bonds in the U.S. “which will help grow resources to serve the world’s poorest.” At long last The world’s largest education outcomes fund is finally underway in Ghana. The $30 million Ghana Education Outcomes Project aims to get 70,000 out-of-school kids back in the classroom and improve what nearly 100,000 of them actually learn. The project previously suffered multiple delays due to COVID-19, along with fundraising and structuring challenges, Sophie Edwards reports for Devex. Read: Ghana launches $30 million education outcomes fund to get kids into school Hazy shades of green Europe likes to say that it is listening to the needs of its African “partners,” but is it really? A question my colleague Vince Chadwick put to a panel at the European Investment Bank’s 2023 Forum in Luxembourg last week drew a wry smile from Oulimata Sarr, minister of economy, planning and cooperation in Senegal. Her country recently discovered oil and gas, and has been critical of Europeans’ reluctance to help finance gas infrastructure. The response from Odile Renaud-Basso, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the 73-shareholder lender still pondering its own expansion into sub-Saharan Africa), however, may have lifted Sarr’s mood. Renaud-Basso said that EBRD is “a bit more flexible” than EIB (which ended all fossil fuel investments in 2019). “I think there are some cases where you can prove that gas is not incompatible with the Paris Agreement, but you need to avoid creating stranded assets and so forth,” she said. EBRD chief: Some gas projects 'not incompatible' with Paris Agreement (Pro) What we’re reading Ajay Banga, nominee to be the next World Bank president, kicked off a “global listening tour” this week as he looks to shore up support. [New York Times] The U.S. Congress passed a measure that would restrict the choices retirement plans can make, but fund managers see it otherwise. [New York Times] A breakdown of how environmentally conscious investing became a target of American conservatives. [New York Times] Vince Chadwick contributed to this edition of Devex Invested.