Development & Piloting of a South Africa Sustainable Agriculture Finance Framework & Toolkit

South African agriculture underpins food security, employment, exports, and rural economies, but is increasingly exposed to climate variability, extreme weather, environmental degradation, social challenges, infrastructure constraints, rising input costs, and trade volatility. After real GDP contractions in 2023 and 2024, the sector began a partial recovery in 2025, underscoring the importance of sustained access to credit and investment in productive and resilient assets. With approximately R257 billion in direct agriculture and agribusiness exposure across the four major commercial banks as of June 2025—nearly 70% concentrated in primary producers—agriculture is also a significant banking portfolio. As banks embed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and climate considerations into credit decisions, pricing, tenor, collateral, and capital allocation, the absence of consistent agriculture-specific guidance on the definitions of sustainability creates material uncertainty. Current approaches vary across institutions, subsectors, and value chains. Producers navigate overlapping finance, certification, market-access, and regulatory requirements related to ESG performance, while banks lack consistent ways to recognize existing sustainability practices and translate sector risks into credit-relevant metrics. This fragmentation increases transaction costs and the risk that viable producers are excluded from finance because expectations are poorly aligned with agricultural realities. PROJECT OBJECTIVE The project objective is to develop, pilot, and operationalize a shared Sustainable Agriculture Finance Framework (SAFF) and Toolkit for South Africa, jointly anchored by AgriSA and BASA with technical support from IFC. The framework will align agricultural sustainability practices with financial-sector ESG, climate, credit-risk, and product-development processes, while remaining practical and responsive to local production realities.

Specifically, the project aims to:

1. Improve alignment between agricultural sustainability practices and financial decision-making;

2. Reduce ESG-related uncertainty and credit friction;

3. Enable sustainable, transition, and resilience-focused agricultural finance; and 4. Strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of agricultural value chains. PROJECT DESCRIPTION The project will develop and pilot the Framework and an accompanying Toolkit for South Africa's financial institutions, covering livestock, agronomy (field crops), and horticulture subsectors. Through research, benchmarking, stakeholder consultation, and testing with selected financial institutions and value chains, it will align existing sustainability standards and metrics with ESG, climate, and credit-risk processes. The final outputs will provide locally adapted, decision-useful guidance for lenders and producers, drawing on international good practice while reflecting South Africa's priorities, data availability, and market conditions. The WBG/IFC invite firms with relevant technical expertise and experience to submit the EOI before Oct 12, 2026. Only shortlisted firms will be invited to submit full proposal later.

Procurement number: 0002023769. Expressions of interest are submitted through the World Bank Group's eProcure (RFx Now) portal, which requires vendor registration.