Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday left Hanoi, Vietnam for New York, United States, to attend a high-level meeting on African Carbon Market.
The Vice President will be delivering the keynote address at a high-level meeting hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation with global agencies and potential financial partners in attendance to facilitate the activation of the Voluntary Carbon Market in Nigeria and on the African continent.
His spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement issued on Wednesday night, said this is a major push for funding and technical support for the Nigerian Energy Transition Plan.
He said participants at the meeting include the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, GEAPP; UN-Sustainable Energy for All, SEforALL; the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa and the U.N. Climate Change High-Level Champions, all of whom have been advocating and actively planning for the African Carbon Market Initiative.
Akande added that the high-level meeting which holds on Friday (tomorrow) will also be attended by officials from the US government and will explore potential opportunities which carbon markets offer to generate resources for clean energy transitions while accelerating economic growth in Nigeria and other African countries.
He said ahead of the high-level meeting on Friday, Prof. Osinbajo will interact today with some of the agencies with whom the Federal Government has been engaging on the Energy Transition Plan and the activation of the Voluntary Carbon Market including GEAPP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
He said an International Steering Committee is driving the activation of African Carbon Markets in Africa, under the auspices of the African Carbon Market Initiative, adding that members of the Committee include the Nigerian Vice President, former President of Colombia, Ivan Duque Marquez, officials of the United Nations, United States Agency for International Development, USAID; Gates Foundation among others.
In its statement on the high-level meeting in New York, The Rockefeller Foundation noted “Nigeria’s leadership on the African continent and the global stage,” and praised the Vice President’s “bold voice advocating for carbon market as a solution to simultaneously accelerate economic development and address the effects of Climate Change in Africa.”
Vice President Osinbajo is the Chair of the Federal Government’s Energy Transition Plan Working Group, a multi-ministerial team set up by President Buhari to implement the ETP.
