Rwanda to Set Up Climate Innovation Center

Rwanda Environment and Climate Fund (FONERWA) have started discussions to set up an innovation center and technical assistance facility to support government agencies to address climate change and environment issues.

Alex Mulisa, the Fonerwa coordinator, said the center will also provide support to new companies in green sectors.

“Green technical assistance must be made available to all so that policy makers and business leaders can make sound decisions”, he said, adding that the green fund has been providing technical assistance to all participants for investment funding. He explained that with the new center, this will be expanded to everyone – including the private sector – to achieve green growth goals.

Marcos Sampablo from the Carbon Trust said that beneficiaries of the facility are government institutions which need to put the environment at the heart of their work.

“When designing this facility, we need to consider the type of support to ensure that climate is at the heart of all policies”, he said.

Potential supporters of Rwanda’s future Climate Innovation center are government, private sector, multilaterals, donors and philanthropists.

Rwanda Green Fund has mobilized over $100m and is already investing in over 30 transformative climate resilience initiatives.

A 2008 study under EDPRS revealed that climate change affects national economy whereby the country loses 1% of GDP every year.

It requires between $50m-350m to mitigate and adapt to climate effects every year.