CAP4NATFIN stands for Capacities for Nature Finance, and the project aims to strengthen the role of public biodiversity agencies in shaping a favourable environment for financing nature.
The FEXTE mechanism is a technical exchange project format funded by AFD and approved by the French national treasury.
The signing ceremony took place at the Pretoria National Botanical Garden and builds on nearly four years of collaboration between Sanbi and OFB.
The new project follows the success of the first FEXTE-funded Partnership for Biodiversity and Marine Conservation (#SA-FRPartnership4Biodiversity), launched in 2022 and implemented jointly by Sanbi, OFB and South African National Parks (SANParks), with support from AFD.
That partnership, which continues into 2027, is delivering significant outcomes for all three of the biodiversity institutions involved, including knowledge exchange, capacity development, and strengthened international cooperation.
Mechanisms for cooperation include study tours, in-person workshops, participation in global conferences, and technical products and consulting services.
"The success of the first FEXTE partnership gives us confidence that this next technical exchange on capacities for nature finance will be of immense value," said Sanbi CEO Shonisani Munzhedzi at the signing ceremony.
"South Africa is still at an early stage of engagement with the rapidly evolving field of nature finance.
“For Sanbi, this project will help clarify the role of a national biodiversity institute in mobilising, tracking and shaping financial flows for nature-positive outcomes."
The director-general of the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB), Olivier Thibault, emphasised that, as public funding for biodiversity continues to decline, innovative nature finance mechanisms will be essential to secure sustainable funding for conservation.
Marie-Hélène Loison, AFD regional director for Southern Africa, reaffirmed AFD's commitment to supporting countries in the region to strengthen biodiversity assessment and knowledge systems.
She highlighted the agency's strong and ongoing investment in biodiversity, which currently focuses on identifying innovative finance tools for nature and on linking with the private sector to establish long-term support mechanisms for conservation.
The initiative comes at a particularly crucial moment.
Sanbi, together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), recently completed a comprehensive review of South Africa's Biodiversity Expenditure (2016-2025).
The findings reveal a growing biodiversity finance gap that increasingly constrains the country's ability to conserve and sustainably use its rich biodiversity.
In response, the CAP4NATFIN FEXTE Project will strengthen South Africa's biodiversity finance architecture by supporting the refinement of a national biodiversity finance taxonomy and improving methodologies for tracking resource mobilisation across public and private sectors.
This includes developing the budget tagging system across all sources, expenditure tracking, and performance indicators.
The project, supported by OFB's expertise as a technical institution, will also reinforce Sanbi's institutional role in monitoring and reporting on Targets 14, 15, 18 and 19 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, ensuring the generation of robust, decision-useful data for national reporting and for the growing private-sector demand for biodiversity-related disclosures within ESG frameworks.
The initiative positions Sanbi's Technical and Scientific Cooperation Support Centre under the Convention on Biological Diversity as a central node linking public policy, scientific data and financial systems, helping to unlock and better direct finance toward biodiversity outcomes in South Africa and across the nine countries supported by the centre.
Partners expressed their hope that this FEXTE project will lay the foundation for larger-scale nature finance initiatives across the region.
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