Last year, the Uganda Institute of Banking and Financial Services (UIBFS), in partnership with aBi Finance, and other stakeholders in the financial sector, embarked on developing Green Finance Curriculum project that will guide both financial service providers and the public on how to deal with green financing.
‘’Today, we are very excited to be in advanced stage of developing a green finance curriculum. And by green finance curriculum, we are talking about content knowledge that we are going to use to train the public, the users, the providers of finance, in this case, green finance, on exactly what it is,’’ said Ms. Goretti Masadde, the chief executive officer of Uganda Institute of Banking and Financial Services (UIBFS) said in her opening remarks during green Finance Curriculum Validation Workshop held on 11th March 2025, at Sheraton hotel in Kampala.
‘’We have been told many times that it is confused. Is it climate finance? Is it green finance? Is it sustainable finance? Is it environment finance? All these aspects, we are putting them together in this one curriculum to ensure that we fully understand what it is. It’s important because there is a lot of change in the world. Apart from climate change, we’ve got social changes, we’ve got global changes, we’ve got governance changes, and all these are affecting us,’’ she noted.
She said ‘’While we are probably the least responsible for what is happening Africa on a whole, we are least prepared to actually manage or least prepared to sustain our being during these changes.’’
‘’The curriculum involves different aspects. It will involve a description of what green finance is, which really is financing that has good environmental, social and government outcomes. So it’s really an end to end curriculum. We are also going to have case studies in there so that we can know and understand. How is it done elsewhere? What challenges do they have? We are going to have issues to do with capital markets. So we are going to be looking at all these things in the curriculum. It’s a comprehensive end to end.
Following the Curriculum Development Workshop that was held last year in September, the validation workshop was held to review the curriculum that has been developed and measure its effectiveness in the banking and finance industry.
A wide variety of stakeholders have been involved in developing this curriculum, namely:
- The Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
- Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Cooperatives
- Bank of Uganda, Insurance Regulatory Authority
- Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority
- Uganda Insurers’ Association
- National Environment Management Authority
- Uganda Energy Credit Capitalization Company (UECCC)
- Uganda Microcredit Foundation
- Uganda Bankers’ Association, and several other banking institutions
This morning, we successfully hosted the Green Finance Curriculum Validation Workshop at Sheraton Hotel Kampala in partnership with aBi Finance. We were honored to present the developed curriculum to our stakeholders and receive their valuable feedback.
A heartfelt thank… pic.twitter.com/J1g68iGjSj
— Uganda Institute of Banking & Financial Services (@ibfsUg) March 11, 2025
Ms. Masadde further noted that this is a milestone achieved through partnerships between aBi and UIBFS. “Being that the institute is responsible for promoting professionalism in the banking and financial sector, the development of this curriculum is a step in the right direction. We are providing a practical solution to a pain point that we all collectively experience as stakeholders in this industry.”
Mr. Noah Owomugisha, head of impact and sustainability at aBi told the participants “we are looking forward again to your input to make this curriculum the best possible curriculum we can have. And why is that important? Africa sustainability problems and challenges are so different.’’
He said ‘’Africa belongs to the group, or the group they call negligible emitters, we are the least prepared for anything bad that comes out of, for example, the changing climate. We are the least prepared for anything bad that comes out of both environment and social issues that are not in our favor so this kind of resources should enable us to plan and prepare and do business better, so that we are we are futuristic.’’
