The Tunisian NDA team has defined a strategy to implement its GCF country programme, including the identification of the existing accredited entities and potential entities needed to implement the proposed investments. APIA, the national agency for agriculture investment, has been prioritized to become a direct access entity in Tunisia.

The GCF Secretariat has analyzed the first submission done within the OAS account in 2016, and has recommended that APIA applies for category B on environmental and social safeguards considering the type of investments it was expected to submit to the GCF. APIA was found to miss the capacity to apply for such category B. Hence, in 2018/2019, APIA has benefited from French agency (AFD) technical assistance to perform a gap assessment and prepare a roadmap to speed up its accreditation process, with a focus on building its capacity on E&S safeguards. This roadmap proposed the creation of a special E&S unit within APIA; such creation has been done recently with the nomination of 12 employees within APIA. The roadmap also proposed a series of actions to make this E&S Unit operational and build its capacity to handle not only E&S issues, but also more broadly climate smart and resilient projects in the agriculture sector.

In line with the GCF Secretariat’s recommendations and with the roadmap prepared with AFD support, the objective of this proposal is to make operational the newly created APIA E&S unit, especially through training on E&S safeguards, as well as on project design and CNs preparation. The final wished result of this proposal is that APIA will be fully ready to become accredited to the GCF and to submit interesting climate projects for the Tunisian agriculture sector. The proposal will hence focus on the following activities:

• Under outcome 3, key activities will include various activities to build the capacity of the Unit of E&S issues, as well as the preparation of a manual of procedures to make the E&S unit work efficiently;
• Under outcome 4, key activities will include various activities to train the E&S unit on climate project design, and the preparation of 3 CNs for projects to be submitted to the GCF later on (pipeline preparation); under this outcome, a trip is also planned to Morocco to benefit from the rich experience of ADA Morocco which has been accredited to the GCF for many years and has a very similar profile to APIA in Tunisia.