South African company, Igugu Global has launched an Angel Investment platform, The Green Finance Marketplace (GFM) to enable investors to discover and compare green financial instruments. The initiative will look to accelerate climate finance in Africa.
Igugu offers consistently comparable climate data for financial actors growing cross-sector, multi-geography portfolios in Africa.
The Green Finance Marketplace (GFM) includes enterprise and professional tiers and is designed to aid portfolio managers overcome the challenges of searching for and benchmarking climate risk and climate-related investment opportunities across Africa.
Founder of Igugu Global, Anele Makhwaza said, “Currently, less than 2% of African companies disclose climate exposure and financing; therefore, Igugu Global data is a key step to evaluating the climate exposure of assets in a comparable manner.
“The green finance market has surpassed $1.6 trillion in bond issuance, but only $5.4 billion has gone to Africa, the most vulnerable of the continents in light of climate change. Regulation is scattered and inconsistent, but Igugu Global’s GFM solves this by consolidating debts and companies’ disclosures in one place.”
Unlike peer capital markets solutions Igugu Global has set out to facilitate the carbon transition by relieving financial actors of the time and cost of searching for climate-related investment pipelines, managing and disclosing portfolio climate finance commitments.
“In becoming the registry for how and at what price Africa comes to market; financial actors can use Igugu Global’s consensus and disclosure to monitor and circumvent opaque transitional climate policy and identify deal flow,” she said.
Promoting awareness and understanding of climate-related risks and sources of adaptation finance will help all African businesses to contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy and to Africa’s climate goals.