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The report identifies a significant financing gap in Kenya's climate response, noting that while renewable energy is well-funded, adaptation sectors like water, forestry, and food security are underserved. To address this, it proposes three market-based instruments: the African Conservancies Fund (ACF) for wildlife and tourism, the Chyulu Hills Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) for watershed protection, and the Green Village Savings and Loans Association (GVSLA) for community-level resilience. The document emphasizes the role of blended finance and concessional funding in the early stages of these projects to mitigate risk and attract private investors.

The FI4R endline survey reveals that non-employment income remains the primary source of funds for refugees in Uganda, though there has been an increase in the use of mobile money, savings groups, and cash held at home. The report highlights the role of implementing partners like Equity Bank Uganda Limited, VisionFund Uganda, and the Rural Finance Initiative in providing bank accounts, wholesale credit models, and digitized savings tools to refugees and host communities.

The document examines the intersection of debt, capitalism, and patriarchy in Africa, arguing that neoliberal debt architectures and austerity measures externalise the costs of social reproduction onto women. It highlights how sovereign debt crises lead to cuts in public services, which in turn drives households toward predatory private lending and microfinance. The author calls for a systemic reform of the global financial architecture, including debt relief without conditionalities, progressive domestic resource mobilisation, and stricter regulation of predatory lending to protect vulnerable populations.

The South Asia Regional Resilience Dialogue emphasizes the need to reposition local actors, particularly women and youth, as agents of change rather than victims. It identifies systemic barriers such as top-down interventions, limited recognition of women's efforts, and inflexible financial architectures. The document advocates for decentralized finance delivery, the co-creation of knowledge, and the mobilization of diverse funding sources, including private sector investment and microfinance, to ensure climate resources reach the most vulnerable populations.

TCX addresses currency and interest risk in emerging and frontier markets by providing long-term fixed- and inflation-linked cross-currency and interest rate swaps. Since 2013, it has de-risked nearly USD 8.4 billion of external lending across 70 currencies. In 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa was the second most active region, representing 19% of de-risked finance (USD 187 million) across 18 countries. The model relies on high-credit-rated counterparties, such as development finance institutions, to manage credit risk and connect solutions to end-clients. While 70% of 2020 supported financing targeted microfinance and SMEs, infrastructure and renewable energy projects accounted for approximately 6%.

The programme targets seven catchments across Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic to combat droughts and extreme rainfall. It employs a blended finance model consisting of a US$28 million grant facility for vulnerable communities, a US$102.8 million lending facility for EbA investments, and a US$30 million guarantee facility to de-risk lending for partner financial institutions. Key activities include reforestation, agroforestry, the installation of rainwater harvesting systems, and the establishment of a regional knowledge hub to mainstream EbA into national policies. The programme aims to directly benefit approximately 1.08 million people.

The project aims to address the high vulnerability of Palestinian small-scale agriculture to droughts, water shortages, and heat waves. It proposes a three-pronged approach: strengthening production systems through indigenous seeds and water-harvesting techniques, increasing technical capacity via a digital knowledge hub and early warning systems, and improving market access through a multi-stakeholder platform and tailored microfinance products. The initiative targets 38,250 direct beneficiaries across 122 climate hotspots in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a total indicative cost of 10 million USD.

The 'Voices from the Frontline of Covid-19' project, led by CDKN and ICCCAD, documented 50 stories from June 2020 to October 2021 to understand how vulnerable communities navigate the combined impacts of the pandemic and climate change. The project emphasizes the role of spontaneous community organizing, particularly leadership from women and young people, in maintaining progress toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including food security, health, and climate action. The document urges policy-makers to devolve decision-making to the local level, co-fund micro-finance mechanisms, and partner flexibly with local civil society organizations to build resilience against future shocks.

The report documents community-led responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and climate risks across the Global South, highlighting the role of social capital, women's leadership, and local innovation in maintaining development progress. It identifies specific grassroots solutions—such as community grain banks, urban kitchen gardens, and village savings groups—and argues for a shift in external support toward flexible, locally-led financing and partnerships that recognise the expertise of community-based organisations.

The document outlines key messages and strategies for enhancing resilience in Latin America, emphasizing the need for a regenerative economy, nature-based solutions, and the integration of urban and rural efforts. It identifies challenges such as the need for greater private sector engagement, the operationalization of the 'resilience' concept, and the impact of climate change on food insecurity. Proposed solutions include regenerative agriculture, impact-oriented investment funds, and the combination of traditional knowledge with modern science to support vulnerable populations.

The Market Approaches to Resilience (MAR) project (2015-2019) aimed to reduce the vulnerability of rural Ethiopian pastoralists to climate shocks by diversifying their assets beyond livestock. By providing microfinance services—including loans, savings, and credit—the project enabled participants, particularly women, to establish small businesses and generate steady cash incomes. This financial diversification reduced the need for long-distance migration to find grazing land during droughts. The project employed a 'systems approach' that combined financial services with the restoration of depleted landscapes through the planting of trees and vegetation. A key focus was gender integration, with some Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLA) reaching up to 80% female membership. The project reached 188,902 people, including 70,825 women, and demonstrated that pastoralist resilience can be improved without forcing a transition to a non-nomadic lifestyle. The authors conclude that systemic resilience requires longer funding cycles than the typical three-year period to ensure institutional gains are sustainable and to overcome barriers such as the reluctance of financial institutions to serve low-income, non-permanent settlements.

The policy brief highlights the 'value-addition gap' in African agriculture, where low productivity and lack of energy access limit economic growth. It proposes that the AU-EU partnership focus on deploying solar mini-grids to power village-level agro-processing, reforming cooperatives to improve farmer bargaining power, and providing micro-finance and micro-enterprise training to smallholders. Using Uganda's maize sector as an example, the document demonstrates that over 60% of maize croplands could be served by mini-grids, which would displace inefficient diesel mills and reduce post-harvest losses.

The report examines the failure of COVID-19 lockdown measures in Ghana's urban poor communities, specifically in Accra and Kumasi. It finds that 'by-day-earners' in the informal sector could not comply with stay-at-home orders due to a lack of savings and inadequate government food distribution. Furthermore, the study highlights that social distancing was stifled because the urban poor rely on dense informal networks for food, shelter, financial support, and emotional wellbeing. The author argues that existing poverty reduction strategies, such as MASLOC and LEAP, fail to reach the most vulnerable 'bottom' of the informal economy and recommends that future policies strengthen social ties and improve market infrastructure.

The report examines the nascent gender bond market, which as of March 2020 consisted of 13 issued bonds. It identifies a lack of universal standards, with most issuers relying on the Social Bond Principles or UN Sustainable Development Goals. The analysis categorises gender bonds into 'corporate behaviour' and 'financial inclusion' types, noting a significant gap in bonds funding products and services that directly benefit women. In sub-Saharan Africa, the report finds that while there is interest in gender lens investing, no gender bonds have been issued. South Africa is identified as the most viable market for commercial issuance due to a receptive investor base, while Kenya and Nigeria face challenges related to conservative institutional investors and debt capital market instability.

The document highlights the 'value-addition gap' in African agriculture, where low productivity and lack of post-harvest processing limit economic growth. Using Uganda as a case study, it argues that the deployment of solar mini-grids can displace inefficient diesel mills and enable village-level agro-processing. To succeed, the author recommends that the AU-EU partnership focus on reforming cooperative structures to aggregate produce, increasing access to micro- and commercial finance for smallholders, and providing accessible micro-enterprise training to reduce post-harvest losses and improve rural employment.

The report analyzes the cost of credit for seven financial institutions in Ghana and Zambia, identifying that operational costs are the primary driver of high credit costs. It finds that economies of scale and product portfolio composition significantly influence efficiency, while external factors like regulatory reforms in Ghana and economic slowdowns in Zambia impact the cost of risk. The study concludes that high input costs often make lending loss-making, pushing institutions toward safer government securities.

A group of civil society organizations and trade unions urged the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to implement binding protections for workers receiving Covid-19 response financing. The authors recommend that the IFC increase transparency by publishing a responsive financing strategy and a dedicated client website, integrate job preservation and occupational health and safety goals into loan documents, and establish an emergency grant facility for affected workers and communities. They specifically call for the prevention of discriminatory retrenchment and the provision of paid sick leave and childcare. Additionally, the document requests detailed data on the social protection policies of current IFC clients and the criteria used for distributing $8 billion in pandemic-related financing.

The report assesses gender inequalities in Sudan and their intersection with climate change to inform a Gender Action Plan (GAP) for a resilience-building project. It identifies that women are disproportionately affected by climate variability due to existing poverty, limited access to resources, and socio-cultural norms. The proposed GAP focuses on mainstreaming gender equality through Farmer Field Schools, the use of Household Methodologies (such as GALS), and targeted interventions like horticulture gardens and microfinance to enhance the adaptive capacity of women and men in rural Sudan.

A mystery shopping study of 1,102 visits to financial institutions in Kampala, Mbarara, and Gulu reveals significant gaps in the disclosure of the total cost of credit and interest rates in Uganda. The report finds that inexperienced borrowers and women receive substantially less information than experienced male borrowers, and that written disclosure materials, such as key facts documents, are rarely provided. Analysis of Bank of Uganda data also indicates a steady increase in the number of non-interest fees charged to borrowers since 2005.

The document reports on a mystery shopping exercise conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Kampala, Mbarara, and Gulu to evaluate how loan officers disclose interest rates, fees, and the total cost of credit. It finds significant gaps in disclosure, particularly for inexperienced borrowers and women, and notes that regulatory requirements for Key Facts Documents (KfDs) and total cost disclosures are frequently ignored. The brief recommends improving staff training, standardizing KfD formats, expanding cooling-off periods for smaller loans, and harmonizing consumer protection policies between the Bank of Uganda (BoU) and the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA).