Seville, Spain, 1 July 2025 – Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) President, H.E. Dr. Muhammad Al Jasser, has urged global financial leaders to adopt financing approaches that are agile, inclusive, and risk-tolerant to confront today’s overlapping crises and build resilience in fragile contexts.

Speaking at the High-Level Session “Financing the Future: Resilience, Reconstruction, and Innovative Financing in Fragile Contexts,” co-convened by the IsDB Group and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the margins of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (#FfD4), Dr. Al Jasser emphasized the need to bridge the divide between immediate humanitarian relief and long-term reconstruction. He stressed that recovery efforts must restore not only infrastructure but also institutions, livelihoods, and public trust.

The session brought together global voices and featured notable speakers including H.E. Salah Jama, Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia; Mr. Haoliang Xu, Acting Administrator of UNDP; H.E. Hassatou Diop N’Sele, Vice President for Finance and CFO of the African Development Bank Group, Mr. Marwan Mohammed Al-Suwaidi, Executive Director of Financial Affairs and Investments at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives (MBRGI), Rania Dagash-Kamara, the Assistant Executive Director Partnerships and Innovation at WFP and Dr. Fatima Farouk Elsheikh El toum, the Secreart General of BADEA.

Participants underscored the urgency of risk-tolerant and climate-smart financing to move from immediate relief toward sustainable recovery. They highlighted that empowering communities and strengthening local institutions are critical to breaking repeated cycles of crisis and building durable resilience.

During the panel discussion, speakers emphasized that fragility and complexity must remain at the heart of development efforts, urging greater investment in frontier markets through decentralized approaches, blended finance, and locally grounded Islamic finance instruments such as Sukuk and Takaful. They highlighted the importance of bridging financing gaps with flexibility and risk-tolerant mechanisms to crowd in private capital, and called for stronger institutions that can coordinate holistic, area-based recovery strategies. Participants stressed that the private sector should be positioned as a central partner in reconstruction, with innovative risk-sharing solutions scaled up to support communities in rebuilding not only infrastructure but also the social contract and economic foundations essential for long-term stability.

This high-level session was co-convened by the Islamic Development Bank Group and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), reflecting their shared commitment to advancing innovative, partnership-based financing solutions for fragile and conflict-affected contexts.