Despite record climate finance commitments, Africa continues to receive a small share of deployed capital. The challenge is not ambition or demand, but execution.

This paper argues that climate finance in Africa will only scale when it is designed around commercial banks as anchor institutions. Banks already hold the balance sheets, credit infrastructure, and customer relationships needed to deploy capital at portfolio scale. Parallel and bespoke vehicles may pilot innovation, but they rarely deliver durable impact.

The paper examines why deployment efficiency matters as much as mobilisation, and why bank-anchored, demand-linked platforms offer a more credible path from commitment to SME finance.