Kenya is ready to offer green bonds to finance climate adaptation and mitigation activities, an official said on Thursday.
Peter Odhengo, director of climate change financing at the National Treasury, said the east African nation has a green financing framework that would facilitate the issuance of the bond.
“Our sovereign green bond framework was reviewed and we got a medium green score which allows us to offer the bond and bring on board the private sector to support climate financing,” Odhengo said in Nairobi at a virtual forum dubbed “opportunities and challenges for sustainable green finance: the case of Kenya”.
According to Odhengo, Kenya’s priority is climate adaptation though the country is now focusing on mitigation due to lack of financing.
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He said in 2018, Kenya raised 223 billion shillings (2.8 billion U.S. dollars) to finance climate activities, most of which came from public sources.
However, the country has since mobilized 2.5 billion dollars supported by the World Bank to finance climate change adaptation activities at the grassroots.
Jackson Kiplagat, regional sustainable investment manager at the WWF Kenya, said it is critical that the private sector is brought on board to finance climate activities.
Kiplagat said providing climate information to shape the public and organizations locally and globally will increase investment in green bonds.
Oskar Von Maltzan, regional director at German Development Bank (KfW) Kenya and Somalia said green bonds are innovative ways of financing climate change activities, especially for Africa where they are yet to be explored, with the continent accounting for one percent of the bonds globall
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