The Bill & Melinda Gates, Open Society, and Rockefeller foundations have announced six grants totaling $2.78 million to spur innovation in the world’s development finance system and boost support of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement.
Funding was provided through the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) Challenge Fund, a $5.25 million collaboration between the foundations announced in October 2022, with the goal of unlocking MDB financing for low- and middle-income countries. Recipients include Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (Germany), which will develop a new methodology for assessing concentration risk tailored to MDB portfolios; Caribbean Development Bank (Barbados), which will explore accounting practices to better cushion disaster-related shocks and provide tailored financing designed to meet specific needs and challenges; FSD Africa (Kenya), which will evaluate local currency solutions for MDB portfolio transfers to deepen and diversify domestic capital markets; IDB Invest (United States), which will structure its first securitization of development-related assets; Risk Control Limited (United Kingdom), which aims to produce an analysis in support of MDB efforts to develop markets in their own risk transfer mechanisms and benchmark capital adequacy across MDBs to increase transparency; and the University of Leeds (UK), which will investigate MDB local currency practices and assess current risk management frameworks.
This oped first appeared in philanthropynewsdigest.org on June 26th, 2023.