Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) and KCIC Group have today signed a Memorandum of Understanding which aims to boost green financing through leveraging on climate change innovations and research and promoting the growth of large enterprises including financial institutions as well as Small and Medium Enterprises.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, Dr. Habil Olaka the Chief Executive Officer at Kenya Bankers Association said that this was in the quest to advance green financing in Kenya. “Through this partnership we believe that it is a step towards reaching a revolution where enterprises drive a wide-scale social transformation in the society while at the same time delivering profits and creating job opportunities,” he said.
Edward Mungai the Chief Executive Officer at Kenya Climate Innovation Center has said, “With the effects of climate change upon us, this army of enterprises can collectively lead the transition to a green economy through climate-friendly projects.”
Green financing plays a vital role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It provides a linkage between the financial industry, protection of the environment as well as economic growth. Over the past few years, it has gained an increasing relevance mainly due to the urgency of financing climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, and scale of sustainable development projects around the world. Kenya is however still at the early stage.
“Green financing is crucial to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For the SDGs to be successful, it is important to set up a file for green projects and scale up the financing of investments that have environmental benefits,” KCIC Consulting CEO Prabhakar Vanam said.
Despite green financing being a major aspect in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it comes with challenges, especially where both large enterprises and SMEs are involved. Under this Memorandum of Understanding, KBA and KCIC have set up two programs, Sustainable Finance Initiative and Inuka SME program which aims to address these challenges.
The Sustainable Finance Initiative program will be keen on addressing capacity building on sustainable finance and climate change, sustainability reporting in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI), policy advocacy on sustainable and green finance, resource mobilization as well as case studies for best practices in Sustainable and green finance.
On the other hand, the Inuka SME program aims to offer enterprise support, conduct research and resource mobilization to Small and medium enterprises. So far, KBA through the SFI e-learning training has reached over 30 thousand bank employees. Under the Inuka SME Program, over 4,000 MSMEs have interacted with the training.
