The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing challenges in achieving SDGs 3 (Good Health) and 4 (Quality Education). The pre-pandemic estimate of the annual funding gap for health stood at $134 billion, while the pandemic could grow the annual funding gap for education from $148 billion towards $200 billion. Institutional investors generally prefer more mature and commercially viable sectors like finance and energy to health and education, but blended finance can de-risk vehicles and attract investors to these more emergent and fragile sectors.
This brief analyzes the 83 transactions targeting SDG 3 (Good Health) and the 36 transactions targeting SDG 4 (Quality Education) recorded by the Convergence database, representing $15.8 billion and $1.46 billion in total committed financing, respectively. This brief also presents insights from interviews with key stakeholders.