New York, 22 September 2025 — Dr Hubert Danso, Chairman and Chief Executive of Africa Investor (Ai) Group, today called for an urgent shift in the financing of climate adaptation, arguing that resilience must be treated as regulated, investable infrastructure if capital is to flow at scale.
Addressing the UN General Assembly Solutions Summit on Climate Change Adaptation, Dr Danso said institutional investors and universal owners share two core convictions: that resilience is nature’s infrastructure, protecting communities, economies and long-term portfolios; and that the cost of inaction on Africa’s rapidly widening resilience and adaptation finance gap far exceeds the cost of timely investment.
“The capital is already there — in the tens and hundreds of trillions. What is missing is alignment. We must stop trying to make investment developmental and start making development investable.” Dr Hubert Danso.
Central to his remarks was the case for Institutional Investor–Public Partnerships (IIPPs) — sovereign–institutional investor frameworks aligned with the African Union’s 5% Agenda and rooted in proven asset-owner models from Canada and Australia. Properly structured, he said, IIPPs are risk-adjusted, mandate-aligned and capable of closing Africa’s resilience and adaptation investment gap at scale and speed.
Dr Danso outlined four priority IIPP solutions to make climate resilience investable.
First, classify resilience infrastructure as infrastructure. Flood defences, drought-resilient agriculture, early-warning systems, water ecosystems and resilient urban grids should be treated as infrastructure assets, benefiting from regulated returns and protections comparable to roads or energy networks.
Second, structure IIPPs with multiple offtakers. Designing projects with three or more offtakers — including utilities, agribusinesses, insurers and cities — diversifies revenues, de-risks cashflows and makes projects bankable for institutional capital.
Third, put resilience on the balance sheet. Applying IAS 37 and IAS 38 to recognise ecosystem and resilience assets can support sovereign credit upgrades, reduce the cost of capital and enable long-duration, 20–30-year bond-like contracts.
Fourth, create tradeable resilience investment products and asset classes. Dr Danso called for the launch of resilience ETFs, nature-linked and adaptation bonds, catchment resilience funds and parametric catastrophe bonds, aligned from inception with TNFD, ISSB, EU and global taxonomies. He highlighted GreenAlpha, Africa Investor’s platform for NDC-aligned green industrial and resilience infrastructure, as a pathway to institutional-grade scale.
Data transparency was identified as the critical enabler. Dr Danso urged Heads of State to mandate multilateral development banks to democratise sovereign and resilience-risk data through the GEMS framework, warning that persistent mispricing imposes an estimated $15.6bn a year in excess interest costs on emerging-market and African sovereigns, while driving $4–6 trillion in foregone risk-adjusted returns across global institutional portfolios. He argued that immediate implementation of the G20-endorsed GEMS 2.0 directive would allow sovereign reforms, resilience investments and balance-sheet improvements to translate directly into lower spreads and a structurally reduced cost of capital.
His intervention complemented remarks at the summit by finance and government leaders.
“Resilience is already investable. With transparent data and properly structured IIPPs, it can move from moral imperative to regulated infrastructure — and be financed accordingly.” Dr Danso concluded.
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