After two sessions exploring tools and strategies to reduce risk for private capital to flow into developing markets and frontier economies, BASE Foundation is scheduled to co-host another side event at Building Bridges 2026. This new workshop will have a special focus on how philanthropic and concessional finance can catalyse for-profit capital in projects and geographies that they would not reach otherwise due to high perceived or actual risk.

Background

Last year’s Building Bridges workshop “Catalysing Sustainable Private Investments with De-risking Strategies” co-hosted by Cardano Development, the UNDP Rome Centre for Climate Action and Energy Transition, and IMD Business School, found that emerging-market risk is often misperceived rather than mispriced, with well-structured deals showing default and recovery performance far stronger than assumed. This is borne out by World Bank data: a consortium of nearly 30 multilateral development banks analysing three decades of lending data recently confirmed that investment risk in emerging and developing economies is systematically lower than commonly believed. 

Yet, emerging markets face a USD 4–4.3 trillion annual financing gap towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while official development assistance (ODA) from the world’s major providers fell to USD 174.3 billion in 2025, a 23.1 percent drop from 2024. This represents the largest annual decline on record, and the second consecutive year of decline.

This evidence calls for a shift from a mindset of mobilising more concessional capital to building a better risk architecture that can unlock the far larger pools of private investments.

About the event

This interactive session titled Catalysing SDG Capital Through De-Risking: The Role of Donors and Development Partners explores practical pathways for donors, foundations, family offices, and development agencies that want to begin or deepen their journey in impact investing, sharing evidence on what works and where donors can make the greatest difference. Expert insights from Lombard Odier, Argidius Foundation, and Acumen will be followed by practical roundtable discussions where participants work through different de-risking tools, such as guarantees, technical assistance, first-loss tranches and catalytic investment models. These tools have the power to unlock private capital flows in emerging economies and frontier markets.

This workshop will feature expert facilitators from Mirova, Cardano Development, Lion’s Head Global Partners, Acumen, BASE Foundation and more.

In addition, the session will draw on a White Paper from BASE’s Building Bridges 2025 session, which collected insights from 100+ practitioners on various risk mitigation strategies, including key challenges, best practices, and real-world examples.

Agenda

• Welcome & framing: why this moment matters for donors, introduction to different risk types.
• Opening insights: key takeaways from IMD’s white paper on de-risking strategies for donors.
• Expert panel: Nicholas Colloff OBE (Argidius), Dr. Maximilian Martin (Lombard Odier), and Yasmina Zaidman (Acumen) on where donor capital has the greatest catalytic effect, real examples, common pitfalls, and their top advice for donors.
• Roundtable workshop: hands-on thematic discussion, each led by a practitioner, tackling:
  • Technical assistance and recoverable grants
  • Catalytic investing: patient equity and concessional debt
  • First-loss tranches for institutional capital
  • Guarantees for credit/default risk
  • Guarantees for currency risk
  • Guarantees for non-commercial/political risk
• Synthesis & closing — key takeaways from each conversation.

Whether just starting out or looking to deepen their engagement, donors are invited to join the session and learn – through expert insights and hands-on roundtables – how to deploy catalytic capital more effectively, understand the potential of different risk mitigation tools, and leave with concrete, actionable next steps for their own institutions.

Registering for Building Bridges is still possible on the event’s official website.