Germany, through KfW has availed an initial grant of N$144.5 million (EUR 7 million) towards the establishment of “Urban Development Fund”.
“The German Financial Cooperation (via KfW) will support the Namibian Government in setting up a sustainable financing mechanism for urban development (“Urban Development Fund”). The fund should be accessible to local authorities that have difficulty in raising much needed funding to foster infrastructure development,” Director of the KfW Namibia office, Barbara Pirich said in response to an inquiry from The Brief.
The fund is expected to become operational before year end.
“Funds will most probably be forwarded to recipients as a non-repayable grant as well. The Project to set up the fund is still in an early preparatory phase and will most likely not commence before 2023,” she said.
This comes as Germany and Namibia on Thursday will sign the technical and financial cooperation agreements following the 2021 Negotiations on Development Cooperation between the two countries.
These two agreements cover eight programmes to the value of N$650 million (40.5 million Euro), financing projects on access to Technical and Vocational Education and Training, promotion of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, establishment of a Sustainable Financing Mechanism for Namibia’s Protected Areas, establishment of an Urban Development Fund, Sustainable Urban Mobility Windhoek, Green People’s Energy Project, and Sustainable Use of Namibia’s Mineral Potential.
In October last year the German government committed additional support of N$4.17 billion to Namibia as grants and loans for bilateral technical and financial cooperation for the 2021-2022 period.
Germany’s funding to Namibia is reported to be in the region of over N$8.1 billion from 2016-2019.
