NDC Finance Fellowship Programme 2020 / 2021

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are key to adopting the 2015 Paris Agreement, which outlines national goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and identifies financial needs for mitigation and adaptation efforts. Most mitigation and adaptation contributions outlined in the NDCs of developing countries are based upon receiving international support. While support from the international community has addressed some capacity gaps, many conditional NDCs of low-income countries have finance, capacity-building, and technological needs. Recipient countries are hindered by the lack of accurate monitoring of climate finance flows, which prevents them from making more informed decisions about planning, prioritization, allocation of climate change resources, and measuring and evaluating progress.

The main purpose of the NDC Finance Fellowships is to enhance the capacity of 100 high-potential professionals from sub-Saharan Africa’s research and policy communities on the NDC financing mechanism. This bilingual capacity-building program (English and French) will train these professionals, who will be responsible for preparing and implementing NDCs and have the potential to be leaders in this domain. It will also explore key institutional, technical, and financial capacity gaps and needs with respect to the implementation of NDC targets at both the national and local levels.

The objective of the project is to:

• Develop of the FSDF e-Campus | Certified Expert in Financing NDCs (frankfurt-school.de) to build the capacity of southern researchers and policy makers;
• To train over 100 policy makers and researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa on the current developments in the field of NDC finance, i.e. state-of-the-art of NDC related policies, strategies and roadmaps, financing structures, NDC investments plans and tracking progress in implementation; and
• To develop leadership skills required to mobilize international climate finance for the improved implementation of NDC in the partner countries.
• Empower researchers to increase theirs skills allowing them to articulate their ideas, projects, programmes and innovations via different publications (e.g. discussion paper, blogs, interviews, presentations) in their home countries targeted to different stakeholder groups
• Establishment and maintenance of a network policy makers and researchers in Anglophone and Francophone Sub-Saharan African countries

The NDC-Finance Fellowship Programme (NDC-FFP) for policymakers and researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa is funded by the International Development and Research Centre (IDRC).