Nigeria will receive around $70 billion, or 7% of the $1 trillion climate change investment opportunity coming to Africa, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a division of the World Bank Group.
This was revealed by Temilola Sonola, the IFC’s EDGE and Green Building Market Transformation Programme Contact for Lagos, during her presentation at the Knight Frank Nigeria Breakfast Roundtable in Lagos over the weekend, which had the theme “Real Estate, Construction, and Tech: The Future of Real Estate Services in Nigeria.”
This occurred at the same time when real estate experts and businesses were admonished to consider the demands of 85% of Nigerians under the age of 50 while creating new buildings.
Sonola, who discussed “Revolutionary Ideas in Real Estate,” claimed that a recent IFC research revealed that investments in climate change have a potential value of about $24.7 trillion, with Africa receiving a $1 trillion part of it.
She clarified that the World Bank and IFC base their financing decisions on climate change, which is currently the most important factor under consideration.
She claimed that the IFC and the World Bank were interested in talking about climate change because it was a significant issue and because they thought it would help them carry out their mission of assisting in the eradication of poverty.
“We also believe that it’s a good investment opportunity. So if you see climate change right now as not making money, you are wrong. The reason is that we recently did a report that said that generally, the opportunity in terms of climate change is over $24.7 trillion.
“And for Africa, that is over $1 trillion, and who do you think that a chunk of it is going to go to in Africa? Definitely in Nigeria. So Nigeria will most likely receive about 7% of the $1 trillion investment opportunity.
“So we see it as an opportunity, and going further, we have decided that we are going to tackle climate change head-on in different areas. This is why we think that we have to definitely do something about climate change because it’s pushing more people into poverty and it’s like regressing the work that we have been doing over the years. So we have to do something about it.
“So we believe there is an investment opportunity and these are the focus areas for us in terms of climate change for the World Bank Group. We are looking at clean energy. So the people who do the solar, windmills, and so on, are more likely to get a loan from IFC than if you were buying a diesel truck,” he added.
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