Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire – September 12, 2025. The Association of African Development Finance Institutions (AADFI), in collaboration with Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST), brought together over 50 leaders and practitioners from African Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) for a hybrid workshop on “Financing Africa’s Transition: A Strategic Handbook for African DFIs.” The workshop was held on September 11, 2025, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and focused on introducing a Strategic Handbook for Africa’s Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), designed to guide DFIs in scaling up financing for the energy transition.
The draft handbook includes an innovative scorecard/diagnostic tool to enable DFIs to evaluate critical dimensions, such as investment readiness, governance, ESG integration, climate risk management, and financial stewardship, in projects. The tool empowers DFIs to track progress over time while fostering peer learning on challenges and best practices. Its adaptability to local contexts makes it a practical bridge between global benchmarks and Africa’s unique market realities.
The workshop combined strategic dialogue with practical application. Participants explored capacity dimensions outlined in the handbook before breaking into groups to apply the scorecard to real-world scenarios. These exercises revealed institutional bottlenecks and generated actionable pathways for improvement. The discussions underscored the urgency of modernizing credit evaluation, strengthening climate-focused units, and building institutional capacity to support SMEs and large-scale projects. By promoting a common language and iterative refinement, the program laid the foundation for an evolving resource and a culture of proactive engagement –equipping DFIs with actionable tools to drive Africa’s transition toward sustainable development. The program concluded with a forward-looking commitment by the institutions to develop an action plan that ensures the momentum generated in Abidjan translates into measurable progress. The AADFI and Centre for Sustainability Transition (CST) of the University of Stellenbosch collaboration marked a significant step toward empowering Africa’s DFIs in leading on energy transition financing.