The Lion’s Head team was delighted to be in Abidjan last week to participate in the Africa Resilience Forum 2023, hosted by the African Development Bank Group.
This year’s topic ‘Financing Security, Peace and Development for a Resilient Africa’ is extremely timely. 85% of Africa’s population lives in a country affected by conflict or a neighbouring country. The number of conflict incidents increased 8x between 2009 and 2022.
Participants at the Forum have been discussing how we can best transition from grant funding to innovative financing for investments that contribute to peace and security.
Lion’s Head’s analysis shows that more than US $40 billion was provided for humanitarian and peace building in 2021, almost all as pure grants. We see real opportunities to leverage these scarce grants, including through the capital markets, for peace-positive investments. This approach has potential for greater scale, speed and long-term financing to match long-term needs.
Managing Director Maud Le Moine chaired a panel at the Forum to discuss concrete opportunities to transition from grant funding to financing for peace and security. This included a commitment by the Federal Government of Germany to provide seed capital for a new investment vehicle that will finance peace-positive private sector operations.
We are delighted to see this major step forward, building on a Lion’s Head Global Partners feasibility study published by the German Federal Foreign Office and its Stabilisation Platform in 2022.
