Postgraduate Diploma in Development Finance

This course introduces systems thinking and adaptive leadership, providing students with essential skills to understanding sustainable development challenges, navigate complexity, design credible financial solutions, and drive change. The course unpacks the connections and interdependences between different systems (economic, financial, social and environmental), and equips students with frameworks and practical tools to build collaborative, relational, contextual, and innovative responses to complex development finance problems.

The course provides an introduction to banking and finance in emerging markets. It covers the structure of financial systems, the regulatory framework guiding conduct, and the role played by financial institutions and public development banks in allocating capital, promoting sustainable development and fostering inclusive growth. 

This course provides a comprehensive overview of key environmental, social and governance (ESG) challenges, and unpacks how financial institutions integrate ESG factors into their products, investment strategies, and decision-making processes. The course discusses the growing materiality of ESG risks, the evolving regulatory landscape, as well as the role of environmental finance, impact investing, and other innovative financial approaches in catalysing societal change.

This course provides an understanding of the risk management practices in development finance. It focuses on the identification, measurement, monitoring and control of operational risk by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), and provide an introduction to their business models, mandates, governance, and co-financing arrangements that shape how DFIs can deliver on their mandate. The course aims to produce a highly accessible guide to the practices and procedures for risk management by DFIs in emerging economies. 

This course provides an understanding of trade finance products and principles, and explores how trade finance can support sustainable trade and economic resilience. It adopts a systematic approach to assess opportunities, challenges, gaps and risks in international trade for the African continent. It considers the evolving regulatory environment, and discusses the techniques used to mitigate and/or transfer risks between the parties involved in trade transactions. 

This course provides a basic knowledge on the design and implementation of public private partnerships (PPPs) in the context of finance for sustainable development. It will expose students to the principles of PPPs and the challenges involved in implementing these partnerships, and will explore key questions linked to making these partnerships as successful development tools. The focus will not be on profit-based contracting out mechanisms, but on collaborative partnerships that aim to tackle complex societal and development challenges.