Cities forge connections with private sector at Africa’s Green Economy Summit

From 21 to 23 February 2024, mayors, city officials, investors, private sector leaders and more gathered in Cape Town for Africa’s Green Economy Summit. The event aims to drive investment in projects supporting the transition to a greener economy by connecting project owners with funding.

Just before the official conference began, the City-Business Climate Alliance hosted a public-private collaboration workshop—with support from UrbanShift—and a city-business roundtable, giving African cities the opportunity to dive deep into business engagement strategies and learn how they can mainstream climate action into their private sector engagement efforts.

The C40 CFO Network for African Cities, which seeks to engage and empower senior finance officials based in Africa to access climate finance, also supported two African cities—Freetown City Council and Accra Metropolitan Assembly—to pitch multi-million dollar infrastructure projects to public and private investors.

Read more from our staff members who were on the ground:

Zöe Fitzgerald

Head of City-Business Engagement

“This was the first time we’ve brought some of our African cities together to discuss how their economic development and business engagement efforts can be aligned with their climate goals, and it was a real success. Sharing experiences and challenges and workshopping together resulted in some exciting ideas to take forward through the City-Business Climate Alliance network. Alongside the workshop, Africa’s Green Economy Summit provided lots of further insight into private-sector collaboration. We are excited to explore this work further in the region, and support cities to implement their ideas.”

Rozanne McMillan

Senior Manager, City-Business Engagement

“We were delighted to bring together six African cities to share insights and learnings on working with the private sector to drive climate action. From deep dives into models of public-private collaboration to in-depth discussions on how cities and businesses can collaborate for resilience and green jobs, the workshop covered a wide range of important topics. Combined with Africa’s Green Economy Summit, this made for an inspiring week. We are grateful to all the city delegates who joined us to share their insights and experiences of working with the private sector on climate challenges.”

Amandla Uzoka-Jarrett

Global Senior Manager, CFO Network for African Cities

“It was an incredible opportunity to support Accra Metropolitan Assembly and Freetown City Council in pitching their CFF infrastructure projects at AGES. The summit not only provided a great platform to connect our CFOs and project owners to investors, but also shed light on the disproportionately low rate of private capital flowing to Africa to remedy the continent’s climate challenges. One of the major takeaways for the CFO Network include ensuring that our capacity-building initiatives for cities in Africa focus on tackling the trust deficit between public and private sector actors in Africa, which is a major indicator of whether or not infrastructure projects are successful.”

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