Ethiopia: African Development Bank provides $400,000 for Public Disclosure Platform to boost capital market

The African Development Bank Group and the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA) have signed a grant agreement for $400,000 for the set up of a public disclosure platform and rollout of new financial products including exchange traded funds and green bonds at the Ethiopian Securities Exchange

The grant, which will support the Ethiopia Capital Market Development Support Project, is being provided by the Capital Markets Development Trust Fund (CMDTF). The initiative builds on previous African Development Bank Group support including creation in 2021 of Ethiopia's capital market legal framework in 2021.

Recording of FARM Knowledge Series: Financing Smallholder Transitions to Healthier Agriculture Practices is available here.

Thank you to participants who attended the webinar. We thank Santiago Rosero Mario Rodas Madhuri Nanda and other speakers for their time.

Speakers will respond to some of the unanswered questions posed in the webinar by 7 October 2025.

See you in the next edition of the FARM Knowledge Series!

Producing "green" isn't a technical problem. It's a political-financial problem.

I would argue we will reach an "agricultural sector Minsky moment" before a "natures moment".

A sudden system collapse as risks explode. Failure to account for ecosystem service dependency across agricultural landscapes means inefficient and inadequate allocation of resources to this "sector". Worse perverse subsidies flow to negative externalities that generate systemic risk that is poorly quantified and even less well understood.

Your financial institution may not see the agricultural sector as "material", you may not even invest in agriculture, but the very stability of all other sectors depends on it. That means.....it's material to everyone.

For inspiration on plastics and the use in Agriculture/Food, consider two points, also relevant for the FARM community:

1. Concentrations of food contact chemicals (which enter the food web through chemical leaching from for example single use plastic packaging of foods) that have leached into food are generally at least 100 times higher than concentrations of pesticide residues.

2. While fewer than 1,000 pesticides are in commercial use and chemical-analytical methods are available for all of them and their main metabolites, plastics contain more than 16,000 chemicals, most of which remain insufficiently studied for their health and broader environmental impacts.

Reference: Impacts of food contact chemicals on human health: a consensus statement (Muncke et al., 2020). There is more recent research avalable as is this an emerging field in research.

Funding opportunity for the reduction of agrochemicals and waste !

Launch of the second round of the Global Framework on Chemicals Fund (deadline: 15 December 2025)

Dear FARM colleagues,
we would greatly appreciate if you could share the call for applications under the second round of the Global Framework on Chemicals with your networks:

The Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC) Fund is about to launch its second call for project proposals to support low- and middle-income countries in addressing the urgent risks posed by hazardous chemicals and waste.
Grants ranging from $300,000 to $800,000 are available for projects up to three years in duration. A new two-stage application process begins with a short concept note. Shortlisted applicants will then be invited to submit a full proposal.
This round places greater focus on sustainability, multisectoral collaboration, and the potential to scale or replicate results. Civil society applications must include endorsement from the relevant national authority.
Join the webinars for applicants next Tuesday and Wednesday: https://www.unep.org/events/online-event/global-framework-chemicals-fun…

🔗 Learn more and apply: https://www.unep.org/global-framework-chemicals/gfc-fund

🗓️ Concept note deadline: 15 December 2025