Fair Finance Southern Africa is a civil society coalition working towards ensuring Development Finance Institutions invest in a socially and environmentally responsible manner in South Africa and Africa. The coalition focuses on issues of climate change and transparency.
South African Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and DFIs operating in South Africa include the African Development Bank (AfDB), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Export Credit Insurance Corporation (ECIC), Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), and New Development Bank (NDB).
These DFIs have broad mandates to fund development projects, however the way they make funding decisions is not transparent, and their policies and procedures trail many of those of their international peers, as highlighted by this study by Fair Finance member the Centre for Environmental Rights in 2020. Africa is one of the most unequal continents in the world, and as such, the role of DFIs is incredibly important to bring about true development.
DFIs have traditionally operated without much oversight, whether from parliament or civil society. A number of civil society organisations have sought to change that recently, and the Fair Finance Coalition brings many of these organisations together to improve transparency and accountability of these institutions and importantly their financing practices.
Using the Fair Finance Guide International Methodology, we assess and report on the finance and investment policies of Public Finance Institutions operating in Southern Africa and benchmark them against international sustainability standards.
The report provides a broad assessment of the environmental risks of deep-sea gas exploitation, identifies key information that is lacking, and offers an indication of the flaws and weaknesses in the environmental risk assessments conducted for the Rovuma Basin gas projects.
Discover our newly launched Fair Finance Online School, an exciting and interactive online resource created to make climate finance easy to understand!
Fair Finance International (FFI) is an international civil society network of over 100 CSO partners and allies, initiated by Oxfam Novib, that seeks to strengthen the commitment of banks and other financial institutions to social, environmental and human rights standards in 15 countries.
As a global network we use a rigorous methodology to assess, report on, and campaign for more responsible investment policies & practices. By benchmarking the investment policies and practices of financial institutions in critical areas such as human rights and climate impact, we enable consumers and citizens to demand more socially responsible, fair, and sustainable investments.
FFI builds on a pioneering model developed in the Netherlands since 2009, followed by a similar initiative in Brazil in 2011, which demonstrated the potential for bringing about positive change in the ways the financial sector invests.
