In the coming weeks, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will take center stage for international development and climate finance. CIF will be there, participating in the MENA regional climate week in Riyadh (October 8-12), the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Marrakech (October 9-15), and COP28 in Dubai (November 30-December 12).
The MENA region, composed of largely middle-income countries highly vulnerable to climate change, dominated by fossil fuel and threatened by rapid and unstructured urbanization, is key to CIF’s new programs on Industry Decarbonization and Climate-Smart Cities. In Riyadh, CIF interim CEO Luis Tineo will brief the First Urban Transitions Mission & Annual Innovation Gathering on the challenges and opportunities in rethinking, updating, and rebuilding urban infrastructure for a sustainable future — as well as CIF’s unique role in the space.
But CIF’s engagement in MENA is not new. Some MENA countries have among the best renewable energy resources in the world, and CIF supported these future-proof developments in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, notably with a regional program that was started in 2015.
Let’s put the spotlight on Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, where CIF has funded pioneering climate action over the years.
Morocco: Concentrated Solar Power and Wind Energy
Morocco is highly dependent on fossil fuels but, with vast wind and solar resources, has tremendous potential for a clean and independent energy future. In this country, CIF brought in $149.75m and mobilized 2.40bn in co-financing, accelerating the energy transition with pioneering projects such as the Noor Ouarzazate Concentrated Solar Plant, the largest solar complex of its kind in the world. This plant, visible from space, stretches across an area as big as 3,500 soccer fields and produces 580MW of power, using two million mirrors to transform the light of the sun into clean thermal energy that is available day and night.
CIF’s contribution was instrumental in de-risking this groundbreaking investment implemented by the African Development Bank and the World Bank, and in supporting the Noor community to take full advantage of this local development opportunity.
In Morocco, CIF concessional financing is enabling 1,100 MW in new wind power capacity and helped establish the infrastructure needed to make wind power commercially viable.
Tunisia’s Forests and Silvopastoral Communities
“The Climate Investment Funds helps enormously,” said Tunisia’s Fatin Eleuch, Director and Forest Investment Program focal point at the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries at the recent CIF Africa Learning Exchange. “We have a national investment plan for Tunisia that has been approved by the CIF committee. Following this we had a loan from the World Bank to finance a $100m forestry project.”
Tunisia was the first country in North Africa and the Middle East to participate in CIF’s Forest Investment Program, with both climate change mitigation and climate resilience benefits. Tunisia’s forest is scarce and precious, and rangelands, covering 27 percent of the land area, are a vital source of rural livelihoods, carbon sequestration, and watershed management. With climate change, Tunisia has been experiencing higher temperatures, more periods of extreme heat and more erratic rainfall. The country wants to control erosion and conserve soil moisture and fertility, increasing climate resilience, while also reducing its carbon footprint. Tunisia’s strategy focuses on ten sites totaling 100,000 ha and covering 6 governorates, where joint management of state lands with communities is implemented and agro-silvopastoral value chains are developed.
Egypt: the Power of Wind and Nature-based Solutions
Egypt received $124.3m in CIF funding, mobilizing $555.5m co-financing, to develop the country’s tremendous wind energy potential and facilitate a shift to low-carbon mass transport in Cairo with new bus and rail infrastructure.
CIF enabled the construction of a 250MW wind farm on the Gulf of Suez, the first public-private partnership of its kind. The plant provides improved electricity access to over 1.4 million people in the area and will serve as a model for future large-scale developments of Egypt’s wind resources.
In 2022, Egypt was selected to take part in CIF’s Nature, People and Climate investment program. The country will focus on the Nile Delta area, which stands to lose 30% of its food production by 2030 because of climate change. There, priorities include addressing the threat of sea rise and promoting sustainable agriculture with water-efficient and heat-resistant crops.