Announcement Took Place During UNCDF’s 1^st Annual Investment Forum Co-Hosted with The Rockefeller Foundation

The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) today announced the Capital Pathways platform on the sidelines of the 77^th session of the UN General Assembly. This platform is intended to scale pathways to capital in support of sustainable finance, specifically for the world’s frontier markets of today and the growth markets of tomorrow.

The three-pronged Capital Pathways platform—consisting of “Interact, Innovate, Invest”—was launched at UNCDF’s 1^st Annual Investment Forum, which was co-hosted with The Rockefeller Foundation. Capital Pathways was announced before an audience featuring multiple heads of state—H.E. Lazarus Chakwera, President of the Republic of Malawi and H.E. Dr. Moeketsi Majoro, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho—as well as H.E. Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Several ministers from frontier economies were also present at the investment forum.

“Being a hybrid development organization & development finance institution means working behind the scenes in close partnership with our Member States’ leadership to strengthen their ability to respond to their constituencies effectively towards the 2030 Agenda,” said Preeti Sinha, Executive Secretary of UNCDF. “The Capital pathways platform will serve as a data room and gather invaluable country information, analytics and investments to attract much needed capital in the last mile, directly building the foundations to break the paradigm challenges of lack of access to capital and lack of bankable projects.”

“Interact, Innovate, Invest” represents the three-pronged approach that underlies Capital Pathways, which will enable greater amounts of sustainable private finance to flow to largely overlooked markets:

• Interact: Coming together on a regular basis to explore in-country investment opportunities and hear first-hand from both public and private partners what is working and what is missing.
• Innovate: Forming new partnerships and test new approaches to create stronger enabling environments and capacities for countries to attract sustainable investments. This will include scaling up support for preparation of bankable, investment-ready projects.
• Invest: Establishing a platform as a “global public good” to share and put capital solutions at the fingertips of countries and financiers to boost investments in the last mile.

The “Interact” prong of the approach was commenced with UNCDF’s 1^st Annual Investment Forum, which took place in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation. The forum is intended to serve as a kick-off of what will become an Annual Investment Forum for Frontier Economies to be hosted by UNCDF.

UNCDF Executive Secretary Sinha proposed during today’s forum to continue this dialogue in Doha in March 2023 at the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5). She also announced that the next Investment Forum would be convened in parallel with the SDG Summit at the 2023 UN General Assembly.