Canada’s development finance institution is set for a major expansion with the government nearly quadrupling the amount it has invested and a new directive to add the Indo-Pacific to the regions where it works.
FinDev Canada, the youngest bilateral DFI, was founded in 2018 and given about 300 million Canadian dollars ($224.7 million, today) by the Canadian government to invest in private-sector development projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, with a new five-year plan, and two new budget allocations, FinDev is expanding to the Indo-Pacific region and hiring as it grows and makes more investments.
“We are super excited about this capitalization” and “the opportunity to more firmly plant Canada in the development finance ecosystem,” Lori Kerr, CEO of FinDev Canada, told Devex. The new funding and expansion is a recognition by the government “that the development challenges around the emerging markets are huge and so we need to be better positioned, better capitalized to be able to respond more deeply to those development challenges,” she said.