British International Investment

The Urban Resilience Fund B – International Municipal Investment Fund SCSp

AfricaWestern Asia

The Urban Resilience Fund (TURF) is Meridiam’s third Africa-focused infrastructure fund. TURF aims to deliver high-impact urban resilience projects in selected African cities, targeting a minimum of 85 per cent climate finance at the fund level. The fund will aim to invest in urban mobility (e.g. bus rapid transit and cable cars), energy transition (e.g. microgrids management), built community environment (e.g. flood and heat protection, smart city solutions, smart street lighting and electric vehicle charging), and circular economy and waste management (e.g. water treatment and landfill management).

Our investment

Description of the investment.

Our investment in TURF aims to deliver high-impact urban resilience projects in selected African cities. The fund's investments are expected to: enhance urban resilience by improving the expansion, reliability, affordability, and safety of urban infrastructure services; and enhance urban sustainability by introducing cleaner and lower emission urban infrastructure services. It also aims to enable replication by other actors.

Impact information

Applies to investments made from 2019 onwards. The tabs in this section define what we expect to achieve through the investment, assessing the potential impact of the investment against six dimensions of impact. You can find more details on our methodology of assessing impact here.

What?

Impact
  • Economic: Promote wellbeing and economic development in cities through resilient urban infrastructure services (SDGs 9.1, 11.2, 13.1).
  • Environmental: Reduce the adverse environmental impact of cities by reducing pollution and promoting circular, low-carbon economies (SDGs 11.6, 13.2).

How?

Primary Secondary
  • Catalysing markets: Enable replication by other actors by supporting cities in developing viable projects, de-risking investments and generating private sector appetite.
  • Enhance urban resilience by improving the expansion, reliability, affordability, and safety of urban infrastructure services.
  • Enhance urban sustainability by introducing cleaner and lower emission urban infrastructure services.

Who?

Stakeholder Geography Characteristics
Consumers

Cities in Africa

Impacts on poor and vulnerable groups are promoted and supported through the Resilience Committee.

Planet

Global

Pollution reduction is localised, climate mitigation is global.

How much?

Scale Depth/Duration

Potential to be large-scale given the number of current and future residents in target cities and many urban infrastructure services being used daily.

Deeper benefits for those suffering from low or unreliable access, high prices, high physical climate risk, and high levels of pollution or emissions.

Contribution/additionality

Contribution/additionality
  • Financial additionality: We are anchoring the fund at first close and our commitment is expected to help the fund reach a minimum viable size

Risk

Execution Risk
  • Given the nascent sector and low private sector participation, risk remains around the ability of the manager to successfully deploy capital and demonstrate financial viability, allowing the direct and market level impact to materialise. This is partly mitigated by the fund manager's expertise and the fund's structure.

Impact score

Impact score (at point of investment)

The Impact Score is a tool to help us manage our performance against our strategic impact objectives. It is designed to incentivise investments that support our productive, sustainable, and inclusive objectives. You can find out more here.

The Impact Score is published for investments made from 2022 onwards. The Impact Scores are calculated at the point of investment. We publish the Impact Scores of new investments annually, once the information has been externally assured by an independent third party.

8

Environmental and social information

  • Environmental and social summary

    A high-level description of the environmental and social aspects of the investment. This may include a summary of key environmental and social risks identified during environmental and social due diligence (ESDD); key elements of an environmental and social action plan (ESAP); or ways in which we plan to support the investee improve environmental and social standards, such as through their environmental and social management system (ESMS); as well as any other priority areas agreed with the investee.

  • Environmental and social risk

    A risk category rating, which indicates the level of environmental and social risk associated with an investment. For an explanation of the categorisations used, see here. We consistently provide an environmental and social risk category for all investments screened from 2023 onwards.

Environmental and social summary

We agreed an ESAP with the fund manager to further implement improvements to ESMS initiated during previous fund investments.

Environmental and social risk

Medium-High

Reporting and Complaints Mechanism

The Reporting and Complaints Mechanism allows anyone outside BII to report alleged breaches of the business integrity or environmental and social provisions of BII’s Policy on Responsible Investing. This includes breaches made by BII, a BII investee, or a portfolio company of a fund in which BII has invested. The Reporting and Complaints Mechanism Rules are available here. Reports and complaints can be submitted by email to reportsandcomplaints@bii.co.uk or by mail. See more details on our Reporting and Complaints Mechanism here.

For any other general enquiries contact us at enquiries@bii.co.uk

  • Key facts

    Last updated

    When the last quarterly update of the website database occurred.

    :
    June 2024
    Project number

    An identifier number shared by investments in the same project.

    :
    D4609
    Status

    The current status of the investment (green flag for active and red flag for exited).

    :
    Active
    Region

    The geographical region where the country is located. We currently invest in Africa, South Asia, South East Asia and the Caribbean. In 2023, BII’s investment mandate was extended allowing it to invest in regional funds linked to Ukraine, with the majority of activity expected to begin post-war. Investments outside these regions were made prior to 2012 under previous investment mandates.

    :
    Africa, Western Asia

    We provide capital in the following ways: directly – through direct equity, direct debt, guarantees and other non-intermediated financial instruments; and indirectly – principally through investment funds.

    For direct investments and fund investments, this is the date BII committed capital to the investments. This is typically the date on which legal agreements are signed by all parties.

    For the portfolio companies of our fund investments, this is the date (either the month or the quarter) on which the fund committed capital to the portfolio company.

    For direct equity investments, this is the date at which British International Investment exited the investment.

    For debt investments, this is the date at which the final debt repayment was made.

    For funds, this is the date at which the fund was terminated.

    For underlying fund investments, this is the date at which the fund manager exited the investment.

    The total amount committed, per financial instrument, per investment, on the date BII becomes subject to a binding legal obligation to provide funding or assume a contingent liability. This information is provided in US dollars.

    For direct investments, this is the amount that BII has committed to the business or project. For fund investments, this is the amount BII has committed to the fund.

    The currency in which the investment was made.

    Investment type :
    Fund
    Start date :
    December 2022
    Amount :
    $20.81m
    Currency of investment :
    EUR
    Fund Manager:
    Meridiam SAS
    Domicile

    The company or investment fund’s place of incorporation.

    :
    Luxembourg
    Climate finance

    Indicates whether the investment is climate finance qualified or partially climate finance qualified and the type of climate finance (adaptation, mitigation or both). We define climate finance using the multilateral development bank (MDB) and the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) Common Principles climate finance methodology. See Common Principles for Climate Mitigation Finance Tracking and Common Principles for Climate Change Adaptation Finance Tracking. We provide the climate finance qualification and type for commitments from 2020 onwards, which is when we launched our Climate Change Strategy.

    :
    Partially qualified
    Climate finance type:
    Mitigation

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