DAKAR (Reuters) - Ivory Coast will create a $500 million green finance fund to support sustainable growth initiatives, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a statement.
Africa's 54 countries have borne the brunt of climate change, despite releasing far fewer polluting emissions than the industrialised world. They receive just 1% of annual global climate finance.
Ivory Coast's new facility will be established under the African Green Banks Initiative, a platform working to create a $1.5 billion ecosystem of green investment facilities by 2030 on the continent.
The facility will be capitalised by public sources such as the Ivory Coast's government, the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, multilateral development banks, development finance institutions, and potential private sources.
The West African nation, which is the world's top cocoa grower, has been drafting new laws to support other green finance initiatives, such as a body to oversee the management of carbon credits.
Africa has been hit disproportionately hard by the fallout from climate change, which has aggravated droughts, flooding and cyclones across the continent in recent years.
In March, the IMF's executive board approved a $1.3 billion, 30-month lending arrangement for Ivory Coast under its Resilience and Sustainability Facility.
The government in Abidjan has committed to reducing the adverse effects of climate change, and the lending arrangement would support its reforms, the IMF said.
(Reporting by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Duncan Miriri and Mark Potter)