Tanzania City Creditworthiness Initiative

Climate change confronts people living in cities around the world. Committed central governments, cities and other sub-national entities responsible for delivering essential public services know that they must gain the capacity to plan, finance, operate and maintain the climate smart projects. Climate adaptation and mitigation projects are needed to reduce carbon footprints and protect citizens, businesses, and institutional assets. The City Creditworthiness Initiative (the ‘Initiative’) is bringing together cities1 located in many developing countries to identify specific creditworthiness gaps and develop concrete action plans that they can implement to more effectively control their own destinies in the face of climate change. The overall objective of the Initiative is to help 300 cities strengthen their creditworthiness and, wherever possible, successfully finance climate change mitigation and/or adaptation projects within 5 years from engagement.

The City Creditworthiness Academy for Tanzania (the ‘Academy’) was held in Arusha, on August 4-8 2014. with more than 100 participants – including both planning and finance executives from the 34 participating local governments – who identified actions they believe their local governments need to undertake to improve each of their jurisdiction's creditworthiness. They also identified actions at both
national and local level that would better enable them to plan, finance and build low-carbon and disaster resilient infrastructures.