The ICR Facility provides technical assistance to national and sub-regional development finance institutions (DFIs) in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to become stronger institutions and to identify, prepare and implement projects and investments with high development impact, especially related to women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and gender-lens investing (GLI). Since 2020, over 50 DFIs have benefitted from our support.
The ICR Facility provides technical assistance for DFIs to become stronger institutions and to identify, prepare and implement projects and investments with high development impact, especially related to women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and gender-lens investing (GLI).
The ICR Facility periodically selects DFIs that benefit from this tailor-made technical assistance, capacity building and advisory services. Each bank chooses the topics and forms of assistance based on its strategic priorities. Where possible, activities targeted towards a specific DFI are opened to other banks in order to facilitate knowledge sharing and peer exchange.
From 2020 to 2022, we worked in depth with six DFIs:
The topics of support are chosen directly by the banks. For example, we supported the Development Bank of Rwanda with their accreditation to the Green Climate Fund and their monitoring and evaluation. For the Development Bank of Samoa, we provided support in credit risk management, customer relations, innovative financing for MSMEs, and climate finance.
In 2022, the ICR Facility published a Call for Proposals with a special focus on providing support on women’s economic empowerment and gender-lens investing issues. Following this Call for Proposals, a new set of banks has been identified to receive support from 2023 to 2025 on gender mainstreaming activities such as carrying out institutional gender gap analyses, developing gender policies and strategies, and integrating a gender-lens in internal and client-facing operations of the DFIs.
As other public institutions originating from countries which are member states of the OACPS, DFIs can apply to demand-based technical assistance on investment climate reform and policy dialogue to improve the business environment. This short-term technical assistance of up to 90 expert days can include:
As for all interventions of the ICR Facility, requests for support should include a strong gender focus.
Find out more about our previous and ongoing interventions with DFIs:
The ICR Facility disseminates good practices and lessons learned and promotes dialogue and knowledge-sharing between national and regional institutions as well as between geographical regions.
The DFI exchange group is a space for DFIs to share and showcase their best practices and experiences with their peers.
On this page, you can access more information on our DFI exchange group as well as download past training materials and presentations shared during sessions:
