Date: Wednesday, 20 August 2025 | 18:00 – 19:30

Venue: Pacifico Yokohama Hall D (in-person)

Languages: English / Japanese (simultaneous interpretation)

Background & Context

Unlocking finance for sustainable development remains a central global priority, yet the countries most in need often face the greatest barriers to capital access.

In Africa, narrow fiscal space, high perceived investment risk, limited project readiness, and underdeveloped capital markets intersect with macroeconomic volatility, climate vulnerability, and rising debt burdens. These factors erode investor confidence and perpetuate underinvestment.

Despite these challenges, Africa holds vast potential with dynamic businesses, a young and growing population, rich biodiversity, and accelerating transitions to digitalization and clean energy. However, current financial instruments rarely meet the needs of early-stage, high-impact sectors that require risk-tolerant, patient capital.

Concessional finance, especially catalytic first-loss capital, can absorb early-stage risk and attract follow-on investment from development finance institutions (DFIs), multilateral development banks (MDBs), and the private sector. Yet it remains underused and fragmented.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), uniquely mandated within the UN to unlock both public and private capital, uses blended finance tools (grants, guarantees, technical assistance, and first-loss capital) to reshape risk profiles in frontier markets. This role was formally endorsed in Paragraph 33(m) of the Seville Outcome Document from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4), calling on UNCDF to support Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by de-risking investments and crowding in private finance.

This political recognition presents a pivotal moment to scale UNCDF’s partnerships and delivery model. Moving from endorsement to impact requires operational collaboration, pipeline development, and strategic resource mobilization.

A high-level side event at TICAD9 will convene African Ministers of Finance, DFIs, MDBs, Japanese institutions, and private partners to identify practical blended finance pathways tailored to African LDCs.

The aim: shift from fragmentation to alignment, risk aversion to risk sharing, and commitments to action—feeding directly into UNCDF’s 2026–2029 Strategic Framework and responding to African partner priorities.