Government has revealed that legal challenges between World Bank and Green Climate Fund (GCF) have put Malawi at a disadvantage in its efforts to access support for financing climate change activities and projects.
Ministry of Mining and Natural Resources chief environmental officer Evance Njewa made the remarks in Salima recently during a validation workshop for stakeholders, players and civil society organisations (CSOs) in Green Climate Fund in Malawi.
The meeting was organised by Civil Society Network on Climate Change (Cisonecc) with funding from Care International.
Njewa stated that GCF and World Bank were failing to agree on some of the conditionalities for accessing the finances, thereby disadvantaging the country.
He said: “Government had been working with World Bank since 2016 as a delivery partner to speed up the GCF funding support. The challenge, however, was that the bank was facing legal challenges with GCF.”
Njewa disclosed, among others, that the proposal required the Bank to sign Master Accredited Agreement with the Fund, but that the “two were failing to agree”.
“There were possibilities that the government of Malawi would stop operating through the Bank on GCF funding,” he added.
Cisonecc national director Julius Ng’oma suggested that in such a case, government should not wait for readiness of funds, but rather build the capacity of potential institutions, which are capable of handling big projects and have capacity to manage GCF funding.
He also suggested that government should engage the academia to facilitate development of good proposals.
“The government needs to strategise on building capacities of companies such as the Electricity Supply Commission of Malawi and the Malawi Rural Electrification Programme to utilise the GCF funding opportunities,” stressed Ng’oma. n
