Climate Finance Advisory, Kenya

Year: 2024–2025  |  Client: Government of Kenya (GoK)  |  Country: Kenya

Cities Forum supports the Government of Kenya in strengthening national and sub-national capacities for climate finance, its mobilisation, tracking, reporting and integration into policy and planning, with particular attention to low-carbon transport pathways. Access to climate finance is often the decisive constraint on developing countries' ability to act on climate; building the capacity to attract, direct and account for that finance is therefore among the most valuable forms of support, and it sits at the heart of this assignment.

Our approach

The advisory work addresses the full cycle of climate finance. On mobilisation, Cities Forum helps Kenya position itself to access and attract climate finance from the range of international and domestic sources available. On tracking and reporting, it strengthens the systems needed to monitor how climate finance flows and what it achieves, the measurement, reporting and verification foundations that give funders confidence and governments control. And on integration, it helps ensure that climate finance is woven into policy and planning rather than treated as a parallel track, so that resources are aligned with national priorities and channelled where they can have the greatest climate impact.

What we delivered

A distinctive feature of the engagement is its attention to both national and sub-national capacities. Much climate action, especially in transport and cities, happens at the sub-national level, yet counties and local institutions often lack the capacity to engage with climate finance effectively. By strengthening capabilities at both levels, Cities Forum helps close the gap between national commitments and local delivery, and supports the flow of finance to where low-carbon investments are actually made. The explicit focus on low-carbon transport pathways connects this financial architecture to concrete decarbonisation of a hard-to-abate, high-priority sector.

Impact

The engagement equips Kenya to better mobilise, manage and deploy climate finance in support of its climate and development goals, with a particular pay-off for low-carbon transport. For Cities Forum, it broadens the firm's expertise into the critical enabling domain of climate finance, complementing its policy and mobility work with support for the financial and institutional systems on which the entire transition ultimately depends.