This proposal seeks to increase the capacity of Rwanda Government’s Thematic Sector Working Groups (TSWGs) with a focus on strengthening their functions and activities to inform sub-national level actors on green growth and climate resilience that will lead to the delivery of climate actions in their respective sectors, subsectors, and communities. This will ensure that the proposal outcomes and outputs benefit the critical mass of society whose role is to implement government policies, strategies and projects on the ground. The overall results will lead to successful implementation of key national strategies and plans including the Seven Year Government Programme: National Strategy for Transformation (NST1, 2017/2024), Sector Strategic Plans (SSPs, 2018/2024), District Development Strategies (DDS, 2018/2024) and the Green City Development Master Plans (2019-2050).  

Guidance, tools and modules that will ensure readiness and awareness to design, implement and monitor green growth and climate resilient projects will be at the heart of this project. The proposed project presents an opportunity towards building stronger linkages and collaboration amongst the different sector stakeholders whose role is to implement government plans and policies.  

There are still visible gaps at the sectoral and sub-national/District levels in relation to mainstreaming green growth and climate resilient development into plans and project implementation. The key barriers and gaps in capacity can be summarized in three categorizations as below:  

1. Low coordination capacity at the Thematic Sector Working Groups to integrate or mainstream climate resilient development into plans and implementation. This proposal will provide a learning by doing training for decision makers and planners in this group to identify suitable entry points in the policy, decision making process or projects to mainstream resilient development. 
2. Low awareness and lack of targeted skills on climate resilient development with last mile implementers of programs and projects at the sub-national level. The awareness could span from informing these actors on immediate actions that addresses current climate resilient gaps in their project by integrating low and no-regret actions that would provide immediate economic, social and environmental benefits. 
3. Insufficient capacity to monitor and verify investments through the traditional budgeting system. This proposal will build on existing and ongoing work within the key government ministries and agencies that deal with budget and finance to track allocation process in sector budgets activities to put more emphasis on climate. 

Activities include building capacity of Thematic Sector Working Groups to support their operations, upgrade Rwanda Climate change portal to serve as main source of climate data, develop Green Urban Neighborhood Planning Guidelines and train private sector stakeholders in the construction sector on complying with the Green Building Minimum Compliance System.  

GGGI has chosen Rwanda as a delivery partner for this GCF readiness project to increase capacity on Rwanda’s subnational level actors to bolster green growth and climate resilience. The readiness support specifies areas in capacity engagement, the programming process, and finance assessment. It has created achievements in thematic areas both in green cities and sustainable landscapes.  

This 19 months project is supporting Rwanda in enhancing its institutional capacity, coordination mechanisms, and private sector engagement. Through the program, Rwanda has completed secured communication and knowledge management for the NDA within the environment and climate change sector. Also, it supports the stakeholder engagement and outreach of the Cleaner Production and Climate Innovation Centre (CPCIC). In addition, among the private sector engagement priority, there was participation in climate-smart cooling solutions for sustainable buildings and urbanization.