African Development Bank Research Grants
Sponsor: African Development Fund
Deadline: 08 July, 2025
Summary:
The African Development Fund (ADF or the Fund) is the concessional financing window of the African Development Bank Group. The Fund provides low-income Regional Member Countries (RMCs) with grants, concessional loans including for project preparation and/or guarantees depending on their country classification.
Details:
he African Development Fund (ADF or the Fund) is the concessional financing window of the African Development Bank Group. The Fund provides low-income Regional Member Countries (RMCs) with grants, concessional loans including for project preparation and/or guarantees depending on their country classification.
The resource envelope available for a country is referred to as a Performance Based Allocation (PBA) and depends on specific macroeconomic and political performance indicators and the country’s development needs, as measured by the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA). The CPIA process measures the capacity of an eligible Regional Member Country to support sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and the effective use of development assistance. It also evaluates existing project portfolio performance. Additionally the CPIA methodology to determine the PBA focuses on the GNI per capita, size of the population and the level of infrastructure development as part of the needs assessment. The PBA determination system ensures that a minimum allocation is attributed to eligible RMCs regardless the PBA measurement parameters on performance and need.
Outside of the PBA allocation, the ADF window also offer dedicated funding for specific strategic priorities of the Fund. The first is the Regional Operations (RO) envelope which leverages PBA resources in mobilizing financing for inter-RMC projects to promote connectivity across Africa. The second is the Private Sector Creditor Enhancement Facility (PSF) which enables additional financing of private sector operations in low-income countries through risk sharing frameworks with the ADB. The third is the Transitions States Facility (TSF) which is a dedicate resource pool to support the most fragile of ADF eligible countries with post-conflict development, debt arrears clearance and other activities to specific to financing the most vulnerable economies.
ADF Classifications
ADF countries have grown increasingly diverse in terms of their incomes, economic structures, natural resource bases, inequality and socio-economic development. This growing diversity has prompted a change in the way the ADF supports its Regional Member Countries. During the Thirteenth General Replenishment of the ADF (ADF-13), ADF Deputies agreed that ADF resources will continue to be channeled to the poorest countries and endorsed changes to the ADF country groupings.
The Regional Member Countries that are only eligible to ADF resources will fall into two sub-groups: (i) Regular ADF-only countries and (ii) Advance ADF-only countries. This differentiation is based on RMC Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, in that countries with a GNI per capita above the average of all ADF-only countries are included in the advance group, and all countries with a GNI per capita below the average are part of the Regular group.
The resource envelope available for a country is referred to as a Performance Based Allocation (PBA) and depends on specific macroeconomic and political performance indicators and the country’s development needs, as measured by the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA). The CPIA process measures the capacity of an eligible Regional Member Country to support sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and the effective use of development assistance. It also evaluates existing project portfolio performance. Additionally the CPIA methodology to determine the PBA focuses on the GNI per capita, size of the population and the level of infrastructure development as part of the needs assessment. The PBA determination system ensures that a minimum allocation is attributed to eligible RMCs regardless the PBA measurement parameters on performance and need.
Outside of the PBA allocation, the ADF window also offer dedicated funding for specific strategic priorities of the Fund. The first is the Regional Operations (RO) envelope which leverages PBA resources in mobilizing financing for inter-RMC projects to promote connectivity across Africa. The second is the Private Sector Creditor Enhancement Facility (PSF) which enables additional financing of private sector operations in low-income countries through risk sharing frameworks with the ADB. The third is the Transitions States Facility (TSF) which is a dedicate resource pool to support the most fragile of ADF eligible countries with post-conflict development, debt arrears clearance and other activities to specific to financing the most vulnerable economies.
ADF Classifications
ADF countries have grown increasingly diverse in terms of their incomes, economic structures, natural resource bases, inequality and socio-economic development. This growing diversity has prompted a change in the way the ADF supports its Regional Member Countries. During the Thirteenth General Replenishment of the ADF (ADF-13), ADF Deputies agreed that ADF resources will continue to be channeled to the poorest countries and endorsed changes to the ADF country groupings.
The Regional Member Countries that are only eligible to ADF resources will fall into two sub-groups: (i) Regular ADF-only countries and (ii) Advance ADF-only countries. This differentiation is based on RMC Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, in that countries with a GNI per capita above the average of all ADF-only countries are included in the advance group, and all countries with a GNI per capita below the average are part of the Regular group.