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Swiss impact investment manager BlueOrchard has invested $5 million in the African Infrastructure Investment Fund 4, or AIIF4. The funding will come through BlueOrchard’s Green Earth Impact Fund, or GEIF, which raised $25 million last year from Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance to back private equity, debt and real assets funds that finance climate mitigation, adaptation, water and biodiversity protection solutions in emerging markets.
The OECD says infrastructure financing deals that factor in climate resilience remain the exception rather than the norm. Between the 1970s and 2010s, economic losses from accelerating climate disasters increased sevenfold from $198 billion to $1.6 trillion.
Sustainable infrastructure
Climate-related losses are an even bigger concern for emerging markets. AIIF4 is a private equity infrastructure fund managed by Cape Town-based African Infrastructure Investment Managers. It raised nearly $1 billion in August this year to support logistics, telecommunications and renewable energy projects in Africa.
Funding from GEIF will go into the AIIF4’s dedicated unit for climate impact investments in infrastructure and will focus in South Africa and Morocco.
AIIM’s Paul Frankish said the two funds were aligned “to increase clean energy supply, decrease carbon intensity, and provide sustainable food security for Africa through AIIM’s investments in renewable energy, green data centres, and temperature-controlled logistics.”
BlueOrchard teamed up with Swiss wealth manager EFG last month to invest in sustainable, social and green corporate bonds in emerging markets.
