- The 5th Finance in Common Summit (FiCS), taking place from 26-28 February 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa alongside the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers, is a critical first milestone on the diplomatic pathway from Baku to Belem.
- This year’s summit, set against a challenging geopolitical context – with several major funders cutting their development budgets and increasing pressures on multilateralism – provides an opportunity to strengthen the role of the public development banks ecosystem in delivering on climate-safe growth and the achievement of sustainable development goals.
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Whilst large multilateral development banks like the World Bank dominate headlines, there is a wide and diverse network of public development banks (PDBs) that are key to catalysing investment for climate safety and sustainable development.
Finance in Common brings together more than 530 PBDs, responsible for more than 10% of total global investment, to align financial flows with the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals and help drive climate-positive growth. The role of PDBs will become even more important as a number of major international development aid providers cut their budgets.
FiCS 2025 has been timed to coincide with the first meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, following the first joint G20 FiCS event under the Brazilian G20 Presidency in 2024. This is particularly important as many of the levers for empowering public banks as engines for sustainable growth sit with finance ministries.
With the G20 also taking place against a backdrop of political shifts and security concerns, FICS provides a further pathway for South Africa to play a growing role in securing inclusive climate-positive growth for the Global South and highlight its regional leadership in sustainable development.
Country-led platforms for climate safety
The summit is the first in a series of key global events on finance over the course of 2025, culminating at COP30 in Brazil. FiCS 2025 can help ensure there is a more positive way forward this year that positions public banks at the core of country-led climate and development strategies. This will include providing a pathway for Global South countries taking ambitious action to benefit from country platforms, which convene different financing actors around national climate targets to unlock investment for sustainable growth. National development banks (NDBs) can unlock and mobilise domestic resources critical to delivering on these goals and creating growth for local communities.
To do this more effectively, the many international and domestic PDBs around the world must get better at operating as a cohesive ecosystem, working together to foster an environment that attracts private sector investment. This includes partnerships across the ecosystem – from big multilateral development banks like the World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to development finance institutions like France’s AFD and the UK’s BII, and finally to the wide range of NDBs in the Global South like DBSA in South Africa.
What we need to see at FiCS 2025
To live up to its billing as a “summit of solutions”, FiCS 2025 needs to drive tangible action in the run up to COP30 that shifts investment for climate-safe growth and security, such as:
- Reiterating the role of the many public development banks across the world in driving the energy transition, protecting nature and ensuring resilience and security for all.
- To put in place discussions on how governments can better unlock the power and boost the capacity of PDBs, including by removing regulatory barriers that prevent them reaching their full potential and how to use scarce new government money as effectively as possible to drive sustainable investment. These discussions will continue over the year through the G20 and Financing for Development conference in Seville.
- Setting out innovative new solutions to mobilise finance, such as the FICS innovation lab which will outline new ways that public banks can mobilise investment from the private sector.
- Providing a pathway for putting NDBs at the core of country-level delivery of climate and development efforts. This will include playing a central role in the next generation of country platforms in catalysing, unlocking, and mobilising investment. It is hoped that a number of new platforms will be delivered by COP30, showing that ambitious countries are mobilising finance to their climate funds and building on the learning that has been done to date through initiatives like the Just Energy Transition Partnerships.
Quotes
Rob Moore, Associate Director, Public Banks and Development, E3G said:
“With so many major development actors slashing their aid budgets, the global network of public banks has the opportunity to step forward as an engine of long-term sustainable growth all over the world. Finance in Common and the parallel G20 provides an opportunity for governments and public banks to set out how they will do this, and ensure that as countries deal with ongoing geo-political crises, they do not lose sight of the need to chart a path to climate safety and security for all.”
Laura Sabogal Reyes, Senior Policy Advisor, Public Banks and Development, E3G said:
“FiCS is a unique opportunity to drive the future of climate and development finance by putting public development banks at the heart of country platforms. By unlocking capital, streamlining financial structures, and fostering coordination across stakeholders, FiCS can ensure country platforms evolve from concept to impactful action – mobilising finance at scale, bridging national priorities with global systems, and creating real change for climate and development.”
– ENDS –
Available for comment
Rob Moore (EN), E3G Associate Director, (MDBs/DFIs, financial architecture reform, climate finance geopolitics)
m: +44 7860861226 | rob.moore@e3g.org
Laura Sabogal Reyes (EN, ES, DE), E3G Senior Policy Advisor, (Public development banks, Paris Alignment and E3G Public Bank Climate Tracker Matrix, climate finance, nature finance, innovative financial mechanisms, country platforms)
m: +49 160 96466368 | laura.sabogal@e3g.org
Notes to editors
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