Organizations Expressed Alignment on Innovative Finance in Support of Development in African and Asian LDCs

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) recently convened their Preparatory Meetings for Workplan 2025-2026, with both organizations identifying areas of mutual engagement to advance sustainable development for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs).

This year’s Sida-UNCDF Preparatory Meetings focused on determining overarching areas of partnership, while emphasizing the strategy of utilizing UNCDF’s unique investment mandate to strengthen Sida’s development priorities.

The Sida-UNCDF Preparatory Meetings concluded along three areas of broad agreement:

· Sida expressed its optimism in collaborating around the Sida-Zambia guarantee facility managed by UNCDF, also acknowledging that this facility represents a key instruments to supporting the Swedish government’s priority of strengthening the private sector in LDCs and other developing countries. Sida stressed its preference for an implementation period of around 12 months before commencing negotiations for a new guarantee.

· UNCDF conveyed its deep appreciation for Sida’s consideration of future multi-year funding for the Last Mile Finance Trust Fund (LMF-TF), UNCDF’s multi-partner trust fund that pools flexible non-core funding towards shared development priorities.

· Sida communicated its support to UNCDF’s thematic areas of focus—local transformative finance; inclusive digital economies; women’s economic empowerment; climate, clean energy and biodiversity finance; and sustainable food systems finance—in their alignment with the UN organization’s financial instruments to support sustainable development in African and Asian LDCs. UNCDF’s financial instruments include loans, guarantees and blended finance.

The participants included:

Torbjorn Petterson, Head of Division, INTEM

Erik Korsgren, Director of Loans and guarantee Unit

Joram Awiti, Project Portfolio Manager

Samra Pasalic, Senior Program Manager

Ola Sahlén, GLOBEC, Senior Programme Specialist

Elisabet Hedin, Head of Multilateral Unit

Katarina Zinn, UN coordinator and focal point for UNDP

Maria van Berlekom, Head of GLOBEN unit

Zahra Ayadi, GLOBEN, Senior Programme Specialist

True Schedvin, Head of GLOBEC unit

David Holmertz , Head of Asia Unit

Anders Berlin, Director, Least Developed Country Investment Platform, UNCDF

Christel Alvergne, Regional Coordinator, West & Central Africa, UNCDF

Maria Perdomo, Regional Coordinator, Asia Pacific, UNCDF

Abhisheik Dhawan, Sustainable Finance and Partnerships Specialist

Quote for Attribution:

"Our preparatory talks with UNCDF are opportunities to exchange ideas as well as identify future collaboration opportunities. UNCDF's finance work in LDCs that focus on digitization, climate and energy as well as how they leverage their investment mandate in collaboration with the private sector are aligned to Sida's priorities. Additionally, UNCDF's financial instruments tha) catalyse private capital and provide support to the broader UNDS, notably UN agencies and Country Teams make their work very strategic and impactful.

We would welcome other donors to join UNCDF´s Last Mile Finance- Trust Fund and provide them the support needed with flexible funding to continue to innovate."

Torbjorn Petterson, Head of Division, INTEM, Sida