Nigeria’s integrated Sustainable Development Goals (iSDG) model estimates that the country has a financing need of about N125 trillion (over USD 300 billion) to achieve sustainable development by 2030. Besides a requirement of N83 trillion for public sector expenditure, this also includes a N42 trillion private sector investment opportunity. The human and economic impact of COVID-19 makes spending needs larger and SDG financing even more challenging by exacerbating issues of poverty, unemployment and financial inclusion, among others. This implies that recovery efforts must be doubled, and all resources channelled towards progress. Mobilizing the scale of public and private financial resources required faces significant challenges ranging from managing complex financing instruments to designing and implementing policies that incentivise private sector participation, and effective coordination of diverse stakeholders.

In partnership with the European Union (EU), the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is responding to these challenges by operationalizing the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) for financing development through the design of concrete action plans aimed at effectively mobilizing and utilizing public and private finance, as well as domestic and international finance.

On the private finance side, in order to mobilise and align capital to the SDGs, UNDP provides investors and businesses with the data and insights needed to direct capital to where it is most needed. Through the SDG Investor Map, private sector investors and businesses are equipped with market intelligence to directly contribute towards the attainment of the SDGs by scaling local solutions to create impact. For this purpose, UNDP Nigeria produced the Nigeria SDG Investor Map, which identifies SDG-aligned investment opportunities to encourage investors to proactively deploy capital towards addressing national development needs, as publicly available via the SDG Investor Platform and spotlighted through this video documentary. Additionally, UNDP Nigeria conducts policy roundtables to enhance the enabling environment for SDG investments and bridges the demand and supply gap by connecting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with capital allocators to scale high impact solutions.

UNDP Nigeria, in collaboration with the UNDP Africa Sustainable Finance Hub (ASFH), and in partnership with the Financial Center for Sustainability designed the SDG Investment Brokering

initiative, to screen and source SDG-aligned enterprises, deliver transaction advisory services, and broker investment deals. Through the engagement of a transaction intermediary firm, the initial success of this initiative realised the following results:

 USD 15 million raised for healthcare and agri-tech SMEs

 A pipeline of 30 SDG-aligned enterprises across sectors developed

 A database of 400 investors and private sector players

 Case study summaries of realised deals.

 Final Report on key findings, trends, and recommendations for continued learning.

UNDP aims to scale this success by re-engaging the services of an intermediary to provide transaction advisory support to high-impact SMEs and facilitate their capitalisation through active investment brokering. Specifically, the assignment will target women and youth led SMEs, operating within the Climate and Energy sectors, as well as sectors contributing to Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) as identified in the SDG Investor Map. The selected pipeline will also complement ongoing investor engagements and connect selected enterprises to a wider pool of investors including the Italian Climate Fund, leveraging internal partnerships with the UNDP Rome Center, as well as potential support mechanisms to be explored with banks to reach marginalised SMEs. This connection may be in the form of co-financing as well as aggregation of business pipelines.

The specific objectives of this assignment are:

 To develop strong pipelines of high-impact SMEs operating within the Climate and Energy sectors, as well as sectors contributing to Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).

 To facilitate their capitalisation through active investment brokering with a focus on growth stage enterprises seeking debt, equity, or quasi-equity capital on concessional, commercial, and/or quasi-commercial terms, including through aggregation and co-financing through partnerships such as with local banks or the Italian Climate Fund.

 To map domestic and international investors ready to deploy capital to selected SMEs through debt, equity or quasi-equity instruments.

 To identify public support mechanisms to enable semi-commercial capitalisation of growth stage SMEs utilising appropriate financing mechanisms.

 To develop structured impact measurement and management frameworks and capacity building for prioritised enterprises and investors, following the approach of the SDG Impact Standards. This will include user trainings on the SDG Impact Standards to be provided to target SMEs and investors incl., through collaborations with impact management experts.