Unlocking Private Capital for Thriving, Sustainable Cities
How One Innovative Partnership is Transforming Urban Centers, from Belgrade to Cape Town
A decade ago, Europe’s largest unmanaged landfill, perched on a hill above the river Danube, about ten miles outside of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, was a noxious source of fires, landslides, potent methane gases, and an ever-shifting stench.
Filled with more than 10 million tons of waste, the Vinča landfill near Belgrade was once Europe’s largest unmanaged dump.
Filled with more than 10 million tons of waste, the Vinča landfill near Belgrade was once Europe’s largest unmanaged dump.
It was also a regulatory nightmare for the City of Belgrade and the then Mayor, who grappled with how to contain the four-decades old dump site’s notorious impact on local residents and the vulnerable surrounding biodiversity.
But a meeting with IFC’s Transaction Advisory team led to a transformational turnaround—the design of a public-private partnership (PPP) to overhaul the Vinča landfill and create a sustainable, revenue generating, environmentally conscious waste-to-energy management infrastructure
This intervention was made possible by IFC’s Global Sustainable Cities Program, a pioneering initiative backed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), that mobilizes commercial finance to build climate-resilient, low-carbon infrastructure, focusing on urban mobility, energy management, and waste reduction.
With emerging market cities under intense strain from increased urbanization—amid inadequate public resources—the SECO-IFC partnership helps cities turn long-term urban challenges into bankable solutions, all while helping improve the lives of residents and laying the foundation for job creation.
"Cities are powerful drivers of economic growth and jobs creation, but in many emerging markets that potential is held back by weak infrastructure including unreliable energy, slow transport, and limited water supply," says Dagmar Vogel, SECO’s Infrastructure Financing Division Head. "With public funding increasingly scarce, we work with IFC to combine SECO‑funded expertise with IFC’s ability to mobilize private capital. Together, we help cities invest in infrastructure that creates jobs, supports businesses, and improves quality of life."
Since 2018, SECO has invested over $33 million in IFC’s Global Sustainable Cities Program, working across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Using the combined power of IFC and the World Bank Group, the partnership helps cities strengthen their governance, and ultimately prepare better infrastructure projects. The bespoke advisory model can be applied to cities across the world, enabling them to attract commercial financing from banks and investors in a financially sustainable and prudent manner. This formula helps to unlock the billions needed for infrastructure that drives economic development and job creation.
It also positions infrastructure as a foundation of dignity, opportunity, and hope; helping drive positive change in the day-to-day lives of urban dwellers while strengthening business confidence and local supply chains.
In South Africa, where urbanization continues to expand, the City of Cape Town, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, is the country’s fastest growing metropolis with a population of around five million people. This demographic trend, municipal authorities say, is placing significant infrastructure strain on the “Mother City.”
To support a more resilient urban model, and to future-proof Cape Town against rising demand, the City has developed a 10-year infrastructure investment plan to rehabilitate, modernize, and expand urban infrastructure and drive inclusivity through greater access to infrastructure.
In 2024, following advisory support via IFC's cities initiative, IFC provided a $150 million equivalent local currency loan to support the upgrade and replacement of infrastructure across Cape Town, including electrical, transport, water and sanitation, especially in low-income areas.
The IFC loan is built upon a unique tenor of 18 years, allowing Cape Town municipal authorities the freedom to invest sustainably in assets with long operational lifespans. This allows the City to transition to a more strategic, long-term approach to investment guided by data and resilience objectives.
With SECO’s support, IFC provided advisory services to Cape Town to identify and assess solutions to improve energy services and climate change mitigation actions. The ability to attract financing for a municipality directly, or through private sector partners, is a key cornerstone of the SECO-IFC partnership.
“Across our portfolio, we've facilitated over 235 million dollars in financing this year, including 46 million from private investors,” says Vogel. “These investments create jobs, improve essential services, and help cities become competitive economic hubs.”
Back in Belgrade, thanks to the intervention of IFC and SECO, among other partners, the old Vinča dumpsite has transformed into a state-of-the-art sanitary landfill, with a waste-to-energy incinerator that can power approximately 30,000 Belgrade households, and a facility for recycling construction and demolition waste.
Vinča’s once-noxious trash mountains are gone, replaced instead by rolling green hills, clean air, and restored biodiversity, including nesting storks. The landfill, once notorious, is now a best-in-class example for other emerging market cities in how to turn troublesome trash into bright, clean energy.
The pocketbooks of Belgrade’s citizens have profited, too. Early IFC advisory support helped improve project preparation, strengthen the financial structure, and support a more cost-effective solution.
As IFC’s partnership with SECO proves, maximizing the benefits of urbanization is beyond the capacity of any single institution. That is why IFC, thanks to SECO funding—and with the full backing and innovation of the World Bank Group—is working together to build bustling, safe cities that prioritize human dignity, economic growth, and sustainable infrastructure.
By transforming local challenges into shared opportunities, this thriving partnership is turning the urban centers of tomorrow into engines of inclusive prosperity.
Produced by Angela Njeri
Published in July 2026