The Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility (AFRI-RES) was established in 2017 with a €5 million grant from the Nordic Development Fund. AFRI-RES aims to strengthen the capacity of African institutions and the private sector to plan, design, and implement investments in selected sectors to increase their climate resilience. A partnership with the African Union, it is jointly implemented by the World Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. This initiative fosters collaboration among three key stakeholders that have an interest in integrating climate considerations into the development process: project developers, project financiers, and the climate science community. AFRI-RES is divided into four components: (1) project-level technical assistance (TA)
(2) outreach, dissemination, and training
(3) guidelines, standards, and good practice notes
(4) climate knowledge and data portal. The program also included strategic dialogue, outreach, and management. Under the component 1, AFRI-RES aimed to integrate climate resilience from the initial design stage of projects to effectively address and mitigate climate risks. Through a competitive process, AFRI-RES provided catalytic grants to World Bank projects through two separate funding rounds. Teams used the funding to implement a range of methods, models, and tools to enhance the ability of assets, communities, sectors, and systems to operate effectively in the face of shocks and stresses. Details of the funding usage and lessons learned are provided in this synthesis note.