Overview
The Cities Investment Facility strives to unlock significant capital flows to inclusive sustainable urbanization projects. Through three multi-stakeholder instruments – The Cities Investment Portal (CI Portal), The Cities Investment Advisory Platform (CIAP), The Cities Investment Vehicles (CI Vehicles), CIF provides comprehensive support to urbanization projects in the processes of pre-feasibility, SDG profiling, and financing.
The Challenge
Today, 4.2 billion people live in cities and that number is growing by 1.5 million each week. 90% of this urban growth will occur in developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in cities.Urban infrastructure enables this growth and the underlying economic activity. However, there is an annual infrastructure financing gap in excess of US$3.2 trillion, which cannot be addressed through traditional public resources: it requires engaging a diverse range of actors to attract substantial private capital to sustainable urbanization.
Simultaneously, there are too few bankable sustainable infrastructure projects are being developed in low- and middle-income cities. Projects, often proposed by municipalities, are not sufficiently aligned with investors’ financial and impact requirements. For these reasons, many projects are delayed in the pre-feasibility stage. It is at this upstream stage that the CIF will make the greatest impact.
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