TECHNICAL STUDY ON MAPPING AND ASSESSMENT OF INNOVATIVE BLUE AND NATURE FINANCE INSTRUMENTS IN AFRICA: EVIDENCE, SCALING OPPORTUNITIES AND AN INSTRUMENT AND GOVERNANCE ROADMAP FOR THE AFRICAN REGIONAL

- Inception Note – Methodology, assessment framework, data sources, and workplan. - Financing Instruments Inventory – Database and landscape analysis of blue and green bonds, biodiversity credits, debt swaps, and resilience-linked instruments. - Draft Assessment Report – Case study analysis of performance, costs, risks, and lessons learned. - Draft Technical Study – Scaling constraints analysis and roadmap for expanding innovative financing instruments. - Revised Study & Policy Brief – Updated study and ministerial policy brief incorporating stakeholder feedback. - Final Study & Dissemination Package – Final report, policy brief, presentation deck, and policymaker engagement support.

Home-based

6 Months

Background The Africa High-level Working Group on the Global Financial Architecture (HLWG-GFA) is coordinated by ECA and comprises African ministers of finance, planning and economic development, the African Union, the African Development Bank, the African Export–Import Bank and the World Bank Group and includes the participation of staff and executive directors of the International Monetary Fund. The role of the HLWG-GFA has been to monitor and respond to the economic consequences for African countries of continuous shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and cuts in official development assistance (ODA). The HLWG-GFA has functioned as a platform for building consensus among African policymakers on specific requests and proposals for reforming the global financial architecture. The HLWG-GFA has been convening since early 2022, both in person and online, in consultation with African finance ministries. ECA has produced the report The IMF and the Future of the Global Financial Architecture to advocate for IMF reforms that empower low- and middle-income countries. African countries, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), coastal economies and structurally vulnerable economies, face a growing confluence of challenges, including rising climate and biodiversity vulnerabilities, constrained fiscal space, a high cost of capital and significant development financing gaps. At the same time, Africa possesses globally significant natural capital assets, blue carbon resources, biodiversity-rich landscapes and seascapes, and nature-based opportunities with strong developmental potential. The central question this assignment addresses is how Africa can harness these assets to help meet its long-term development challenges. To help harness these assets, ECA and partner African countries arwill worki together to support an integrated national and regional ecosystem for innovative blue and nature finance that strengthens macroeconomic resilience, mobilizes sustainable investment and enhances African capacities to structure debt-sensitive, high-integrity financing solutions for the blue economy and nature-positive development. The African Regional Hub for Innovative Climate and Nature Finance Solutions, to be hosted by Mauritius, will cultivate African-led financing approaches that connect climate and biodiversity finance with macroeconomic resilience, debt sustainability and long-term economic transformation, working to unlock private and concessional capital through fit-for-purpose instruments such as regional pooling mechanisms, project aggregation platforms, sovereign risk mitigation tools, blended finance and guarantees. For the purposes of this assignment, the five intended functions of the Hub are instrument structuring and standardization; project aggregation and pooling; risk mitigation and credit enhancement; technical assistance and transaction support; and market intelligence and data. Scope and Research Questions The study will answer five questions: 1. What has actually been issued or executed? A transaction-level inventory of blue and green bonds, biodiversity credit initiatives, debt-for-nature and debt-for-climate conversions, and resilience-linked financing instruments involving African sovereigns, sub-sovereigns, development finance institutions and corporates. 2. What has worked, where and why? An assessment against explicit criteria, distinguishing the characteristics of the instrument from the characteristics of the issuer and the market conditions at the time. 3. What did it cost, and who bore the risk? Transaction costs, preparation timelines, pricing achieved against the issuer’s conventional curve, and the role of credit enhancement, guarantees and political risk insurance in the distribution of risk. 4. What prevents these instruments from scaling? 5. What should the Hub offer? A prioritized instrument roadmap mapped against the Hub’s five intended functions as set out under Background above, with sequencing, indicative scale and the enabling conditions Mauritius and partner countries would need to put in place. Geographic coverage is continental, with particular attention to SIDS, coastal economies and structurally vulnerable economies. The final case study sample will be agreed with ECA at inception. Duties and Responsibilities Under the overall guidance of the Deputy Executive Secretary (Programmes) or her mandated representative, the consultant will undertake the following responsibilities: • Set out at inception the analytical framework and the mixed methods design to be applied, specifying the assessment criteria, the case selection rationale, the data sources, the interview protocol and the treatment of data gaps and commercial confidentiality; • Construct a transaction-level inventory of blue and green bonds, biodiversity credit initiatives, debt-for-nature and debt-for-climate conversions, and resilience-linked and catastrophe risk instruments involving African issuers or African assets, recording for each transaction the issuer and counterparties, instrument type, size, currency, tenor, pricing, use of proceeds, credit enhancement, external review or verification arrangements, and outcome to date. The inventory shall cover transactions that reached financial close from 2018 onwards, together with transactions publicly announced in that period that did not reach close, and is to be delivered as a structured, documented dataset with a data dictionary and full source citations; • Apply a mixed methods approach combining quantitative analysis of the inventory with structured key informant interviews and , covering at least one instance of each instrument family and at least two SIDS or coastal economies, and including at least one transaction that failed to close or underperformed against its objectives; • Assess what has worked, where and why, against explicit criteria including capital mobilized relative to transaction cost, pricing achieved against the issuer’s conventional curve, additionality of the environmental outcome, the integrity and verification arrangements applied, implications for debt sustainability, benefit-sharing with coastal and local communities, and the durability of the arrangement beyond first close; • Document transaction costs, preparation timelines and the role of credit enhancement, guarantees and political risk insurance, setting out how risk was distributed between the sovereign, the arranger, the guarantor and the investor, and what that distribution implies for replicability without concessional support; • Identify the binding constraints on scaling, regulatory, institutional, market, data and capacity, and distinguish explicitly between constraints that a regional hub can relieve and those that require action at national or global level; • Assess the relevance to African participation of emerging high-integrity market frameworks, including those for biodiversity credits and blue carbon, and the measurement, reporting and verification requirements they impose; • Translate the findings into an instrument roadmap for the African Regional Hub for Innovative Climate and Nature Finance Solutions, comprising a prioritized menu of instruments the Hub should structure, aggregate or de-risk, mapped against the Hub’s five intended functions, with sequencing, indicative scale, institutional requirements and the enabling conditions Mauritius would need to put in place; • Conduct structured consultations with relevant institutions, including the Government of the Republic of Mauritius and its financial sector regulators, the African Development Bank, the African Export–Import Bank, development finance institutions, and selected African ministries of finance and central banks. The consultation list will be agreed with ECA at inception; • Present the draft findings at one validation session convened by ECA and the Government of the Republic of Mauritius, and respond in writing to peer review and stakeholder comments through a documented comment-response matrix; • Provide substantive support to the HLWG-GFA secretariat, including preparation of briefing materials, presentations, key messages and other advocacy tools derived from the study, up to five such products over the period of the assignment; • Support ECA in socializing the study, including participation in up to three presentations, virtual or in person; • Submit monthly progress updates to the Deputy Executive Secretary (Programmes) or her mandated representative, and undertake related tasks directly connected to the deliverables set out below.

An advanced university degree (Master’s degree) in Economics, Finance, Development Finance, Environmental Economics or a related field is required. A first-level university degree combined with a minimum of two (2) additional years of relevant professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced degree. A PhD in a related field is desirable. A minimum of seven (7) years of progressively responsible experience in development finance, sustainable finance, or climate and nature finance is required. Demonstrated experience in the design, structuring, arrangement or independent analysis of at least two of the following instrument families is required: labelled bonds (green, blue or sustainability); debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate conversions; biodiversity or carbon credit mechanisms; and resilience-linked or catastrophe risk instruments is required. Demonstrated experience of mixed methods research, including the construction and use of transaction-level datasets and the conduct of structured key informant interviews with financial sector counterparts, is required. Relevant work experience in developing countries is required. Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality, policy-facing analytical reports for senior government or institutional audiences is required. Experience with Small Island Developing States, coastal or ocean economies, blue economy or blue carbon programmes is desirable.

English and French are the working languages of the United Nations. For this position, fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of French is desirable.

Not available.