UN Capital Development Fund

Maimuna Yusuph used to walk to the riverside to collect water for her family in Tanga, Tanzania.

Miles walked. Buckets carried. Sources that ran dry on arrival.

📅 In 2024, the Tanga Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Authority issued East Africa's first subnational green bond, raising $20.8 million to upgrade the city's water system. The bond was listed on both the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange and the Luxembourg Green Exchange and was oversubscribed by 103%.

🤝 UNCDF provided two years of technical and financial advisory support to help Tanga UWASA structure the bond, strengthen governance, and meet international investment standards — alongside $1 million in catalytic funding to absorb early risk and crowd in private investment.

The result is a transformation already underway:

✅ Water production capacity expanding from 45,000 to 60,000 cubic metres per day
✅ 60 kilometres of new pipelines
✅ 110 kilometres of aging pipes rehabilitated
✅ 12,000 smart prepaid water meters installed
✅ 26,000 residents gaining access to clean water for the first time

We told this story in full with voices from the ground in Tanga.

🔗 Read it here ➡️ https://bit.ly/4uEAYIV

What if students could focus on learning instead of collecting firewood?

🚀 Launched in 2026 through the UN Zanzibar Joint Programme, in collaboration with the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, a clean cooking initiative is already making a tangible difference across four public schools with a combined enrolment of more than 2,000 students.

📍 At Kiyongwe School, journalists recently witnessed the shift firsthand. Cleaner kitchens. Reduced smoke. Faster meal preparation. A learning environment that is starting to feel like one.

Another important change is how the story is being told beyond the school gates.

💬 “Before this, I mostly thought of clean cooking as something that affects households,” said Amina Adam Chamilunda, journalist for Star TV. “Seeing what it means for schools, how it affects learning, health, and equality, has completely changed how I think about the story.”

Clean cooking in schools is not just an energy issue. It is an education issue. A health issue. A dignity issue. And when the people who shape public understanding start seeing it that way, the change can extend far beyond the kitchen.

At , Uganda officially launched the Sustainable Tourism Value Chain Initiative (2026–2030), a new EU-backed partnership aimed at unlocking investment, strengthening tourism value chains, expanding access to finance for MSMEs, and positioning Uganda as a competitive and sustainable tourism destination. 🌍🇺🇬

🤝 Implemented by UNCDF, Enabel in Uganda, UNESCO and United Nations Development Programme - UNDP with support from European Commission, the initiative will support inclusive growth, job creation, sustainable tourism development, and opportunities for youth, women, and local communities across Uganda.

📈 Together, partners will work to strengthen tourism ecosystems, improve market access, support tourism MSMEs, and promote environmentally sustainable tourism models that benefit communities and conserve Uganda’s natural and cultural heritage.

A new CGAP case study explores how social protection networks can deliver inclusive insurance at scale, expanding coverage to vulnerable groups in an affordable and accessible way.

🤝 The study draws on the UN Capital Development Fund's work to develop Fiji's inclusive insurance industry by convening key stakeholders, including the Reserve Bank of Fiji and the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Protection - Fiji, and build systems that deliver for the most vulnerable.

It spotlights two products:

➡️ A bundled micro-insurance product combining life, accident, fire and funeral cover developed by UNCDF and FijiCare Insurance Limited, which today reaches over 100,000 social protection beneficiaries.

➡️ A climate risk parametric insurance product developed with Sun Insurance and Tower Insurance under the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaptation Programme (PICAP).

Read more:
https://bit.ly/4nEXezA

PICAP is jointly implemented by UNCDF, the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji and the United Nations University - EHS

PICAP is supported by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Asian Development Bank.

Aminata Abdulai ran her cassava business in Bo District, Sierra Leone, under a pressure that most small business owners in the region know well: not enough capital to invest, grow, or plan ahead.

📍 In Sierra Leone, credit to the private sector sits at just 5% of GDP. For women-led agri-businesses (with seasonal cash flows, limited collateral, and returns that commercial lenders struggle to model) formal finance has rarely been an option.

🤝 In 2025, UNCDF launched a €6 million agricultural financing facility under the Salone Access to Finance Project, partnering with Vista Bank Sierra Leone and Safe Capital Microfinance, with funding from the European Commission.

The structure was built around how these businesses actually work: grants combined with loans to reduce risk for both borrowers and lenders, and grace periods designed around agricultural cycles rather than against them.

Months later, businesses are scaling production, creating jobs, and financial institutions are building real experience in a market they'd previously avoided.

💬 Aminata put it simply: "For the first time, we can invest in better inputs, processing equipment, and value addition without fear."

That's what it means to move from excluded to investable.

🔗 Read the full story ➡️ https://bit.ly/4fspofa

Are you a financial institution in Bangladesh looking to scale green finance for MSMEs? This opportunity is for you. 🌱

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has launched a new Expression of Interest (EOI) inviting eligible banks, financial institutions, and financial companies in Bangladesh to partner on catalytic concessional financing for MSME access to green finance.

Through this initiative, UNCDF aims to unlock financing for MSMEs investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, climate adaptation, and other green business solutions.

We are looking for:

🔸 Licensed banks, financial institutions, and financial companies operating in Bangladesh with strong MSME lending experience

🔸 Institutions with growing portfolios in green finance, climate finance, or sustainable lending

🔸 Partners ready to co-finance and scale affordable green financing solutions for MSMEs

Applicants must demonstrate willingness and ability to co‑finance.

Selected institutions will receive:

🔹 Up to USD 450,000 in concessional financing from UNCDF
🔹 Technical assistance and pipeline development support
🔹 Opportunity to strengthen institutional capacity in green MSME finance

📅 Application deadline: 27 May 2026

🔗 Apply here: https://bit.ly/4tImvKQ

Tourism drives 70% of the Cook Islands economy. Most visitors need a driver's licence to explore freely.

Until recently, getting one meant joining a queue of up to 300 people while staff manually updated three separate, disconnected systems. Thirty minutes minimum. Paper-heavy. Error-prone.

That's not just an administrative headache. In a small island economy where the visitor experience is the product, friction has a real cost.

🤝 Under the Pacific Digital Economy Programme (a joint initiative of UNCDF and UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji), the Cook Islands Police Force is replacing that process with a single integrated platform. Online applications before arrival. No manual reconciliation across systems. No unnecessary queues.

📱 It sounds like a small fix. But foundational digital infrastructure is exactly where change compounds. When government systems work, businesses can build on them. When visitors move freely, spending follows.

This is the kind of investment UNCDF is designed to make in Small Island Developing States; grants, concessional loans, and technical assistance that address fragile risk profiles and create the conditions for digital economies to grow.

PDEP is supported by New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the European Commission.

Close to 80% of African startup funding flows to four countries.

Nigeria. Kenya. South Africa. Egypt.

The path to capital for fintech innovators everywhere else runs through a much harder set of questions. Not just "is your product viable?" but "is your market investable at all?"

📍 In Gabon, CLIKPAY has been answering both for years.

📱 The company became the first fintech in Central Africa to secure a license from COBAC (the supranational banking supervisor), allowing it to operate as a payment service provider across the entire CEMAC zone. That milestone took years of navigating regulation that, as one investor noted, made early financial statements hard to look at: losses, limited revenue, and a long period of uncertainty that kept outside capital away.

🤝 UNCDF's role was to take that first risk by deploying a $150,000 grant for national expansion and communications, alongside technical training through Digital Frontiers Institute, with support from the European Commission and the OACPS Secretariat - Secrétariat OEACP.

Not to replace investor capital. But to make CLIKPAY investable enough that investor capital could follow.

📈 Today, CLIKPAY operates across all nine provinces of Gabon. Its agent and merchant network has grown from 500 to over 5,000. It processes deposits, withdrawals, sub-regional remittances, utility payments, and government fees, digitizing the everyday transactions that Gabon's microentrepreneurs need.

The investment concentration in Africa's Big Four is structural. But CLIKPAY shows it isn't fixed.

UNCDF and United Nations Development Programme - UNDP, through the Afghanistan Digital Prosperity Project (ADPP), are supporting the expansion of digital financial services in Afghanistan.

🤝 In partnership with HesabPay Afghanistan and Mutahid Microfinance Instituti, we’ve launched a ‘first-of-its-kind' digital solution in Afghanistan. Now, small business owners can manage their entire loan process, such as applying, receiving funds, and making repayments directly from their phones, using the HesabPay digital wallet.

✅ No long waits: Everything is handled digitally.
✅ Secure & Simple: Move away from cash-heavy processes to a secure digital ecosystem.
✅ Inclusive Financing: Supporting local needs with modern technology.

From digitizing Murabaha payments to launching this integrated platform, we are committed to ensuring that financial tools are in the hands of those who need them most.

Stay tuned as we continue to expand digital prosperity across the country!

🔗 Read more ➡️ https://bit.ly/4eGIYnK

In Nebbi District, northwest Uganda, farmers used to pile banana leaves into flooded rivers just to cross to their fields.

That was the reality until a community decided what it needed, and the finance followed.

🌱 Through UNCDF's LoCAL+ programme, 2.4 million Ugandans across 14 districts are now shaping and directing resilience investments in their own communities: bridges that connect farmers to markets, tree nurseries that hold riverbanks together, water infrastructure that turns flood risk into irrigation opportunity.

📈 The results are real. For Maureen Akumu, a farmer and trader in Nebbi, her yields improved, her income grew, and the food supply at home is better.

But the work isn't finished. Uganda faces a $17.7 billion climate adaptation gap and most of that funding depends on external support. LoCAL+ is testing how to change that, by attracting private capital alongside public grants and turning locally identified needs into investable pipelines.

This work starts with communities and scales with markets. That's the model.

🤝 These results in Uganda were made possible with thanks to the support of our partners Diplomatie.Belgium, Denmark (Udenrigsministeriet), the European Commission and Irish Foreign Ministry.