An arm of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has disclosed that Nigeria would get about a seven per cent share of the $1 trillion climate change investment opportunity coming to Africa, which translates to $70 billion.
The IFC’s EDGE and Green Building Market Transformation Programme Contact for Lagos, Temilola Sonola, made this known in Lagos during her presentation at the Knight Frank Nigeria Breakfast Roundtable with the theme: “Real Estate, Construction, and Tech: The Future of Real Estate Services in Nigeria”
Speaking on the topic, “Revolutionary Ideas in Real Estate,” Sonola said that the IFC’s recent report showed that climate change presents Investment opportunities worth over $24.7 trillion, with Africa getting a $1 trillion share of that.
She explained that discussion about climate change was important to the IFC and the World Bank because it is a huge area and because of their belief that the issue could help them to fulfil their mandate of getting people out of poverty.
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According to her, climate change remains the biggest issue that is being considered now at the World Bank and IFC and which is driving their lending decisions.
“We also believe that it’s a good investment opportunity. So if you see climate change right now as not making money, you are wrong,” Sonola was quoted as saying. “The reason being that we recently did a report that said that in the world generally, the opportunity in terms of climate change is over $24.7 trillion”.
She noted that the bulk of the $1 trillion of investment opportunity coming into Africa will go to Nigeria to enable the bank to tackle climate change head-on in different areas.
“This is why we think that we must do something about climate change because it’s pushing more people into poverty and it’s like regressing the work that we are doing over the years. So we have to do something about it,” Sonola said.
Speaking further, she said, “So we believe there is an investment opportunity and these are the focus areas for us in terms of climate change for the World Bank Group. We are looking at clean energy. So the people who do the solar, windmills and so on, you are more likely to get a loan from IFC than if you were buying the diesel truck,” he added.
Story was adapted from Thisday.
