Opinion: Green bonds in Africa could be one way out for a zero-yield world

Africa has slid down investors’ lists of favored investment destinations as a result of the oil and commodity price dip of the past three years and the well-known problems of South Africa and Nigeria, the continent’s two largest economies.

However, in one fast-growing but still undersized section of international capital markets there could be room for African countries to take a front seat. The new frontier for Africa may be the issuance of green bonds to finance environmentally friendly development projects including infrastructure, under a range of initiatives by governments, banks and international development agencies.

A panel on green-bond issuance, with around 100 participants, was one of the best attended sessions at last week’s African capital markets conference in Nairobi organized by the International Finance Corp., the private-sector arm of the World Bank. It featured presentations from Barclays, Citibank, the Kenyan Bankers Association and the London Stock Exchange. As one speaker said, three or four years ago only a handful of delegates would have taken part.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/green-bonds-in-africa-could-be-one-way-out-for-a-zero-yield-world-2017-05-16

Rod Amaru

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