03 March 2025 - Joining the 2025 Finance in Common Summit (FiCS), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) called for enhanced collaboration between governments, businesses, civil society and the development financing community to continue using sport as an important enabler for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“It is only by government, business, civil society and the development financing community joining hands that we can fully realise the potential of sport as an enabler of sustainable development,” said Ser Miang Ng, IOC Member and Chair of the IOC Finance Commission, speaking at the event.
Addressing the global network of Public Development Banks (PDBs) gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, from 26 to 28 February, Ng continued: “The FiCS community has a key role to play in mobilising and fostering sustainable and inclusive financing for sport-based projects and initiatives.”
The IOC is a Supporting Partner and member of the Steering Committee of the FiCS Coalition for Sustainable Development through Sport, which was launched under the leadership of the global network of PDBs in 2020 with the goal of mobilising resources for sports projects.
During the Summit, the FiCS Coalition for Sustainable Development through Sport introduced an ambitious roadmap focusing on:
- expanding financing for inclusive and sustainable sports infrastructure;
- harnessing the catalytic impact of major sporting events, such as the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, to foster long-term development benefits; and
- deploying innovative financial instruments and scaling investment in sport-for-development research.
The FICS final communiqué can be read here.
Building on the commitment made in Paris
The FiCS is an annual meeting of PDBs and their partners, which convene to reinforce their commitments in support of common actions for climate change and sustainable development. This year’s Summit had an increased focus on sport, following the pledges made by the FICS Coalition at the Summit on Sport for Sustainable Development, which took place on the eve of the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
On that occasion, the Coalition pledged to invest USD 10 billion in community-based, inclusive and sustainable sports infrastructure and projects by 2030, an indication of how sport is committed to taking concrete action.
In Cape Town, a FiCS Sport Investment Forum, co-organised by the Coalition for Sustainable development through Sport and Sport Impact, launched a roadmap for investing these USD 10 billion at domestic and international level.
“The IOC is steadfast in its commitment to work with you, the development financing community, to fully realise, and scale, the extensive social and economic returns that can be garnered from this investment,” Ng said.
“We can attest to this impact first hand, based on our cooperation with our many partners from the UN family, development organisations, civil society and a small but growing number of Public Development Banks.”
A collective approach
The IOC is already working with a diverse network of collaborators, supporting 550 sport for development initiatives across 176 countries. The importance of this collective effort was reiterated by IOC Member Matlohang Moiloa-Ramoqopo, who also attended the FiCS:
“It is only by working together that we can ensure more young people in precarious economic situations, facing gender inequality, social exclusion and displacement, can realise the positive benefits and return on investment that sport-based human capital development programmes can deliver,” she told the Summit.
The IOC is already actively involved in several projects with PDBs, one such example being its collaboration with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and Laureus Sport for Good, through which 14 new projects will be supported by Sport for Education and Sustainable Livelihoods in Africa (SESLA), a ground-breaking initiative that was created through an innovative collaboration between the three organisations.
With the added support of key African sport and social development institutions, the initiative aims to drive youth education and employability in Africa through sport.
The IOC’s collaboration with the AFD also extends to the Sustained Insight and Impact Initiative, providing additional funding and capacity building support to scale up 10 of the most innovative and impactful sport-for-development projects in Africa. These projects were seeded by the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and the AFD through Paris 2024’s Impact 2024 international legacy programme.
Most recently, the IOC and AFD launched a new joint initiative to fund sport and youth crime prevention projects in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, reaching 10,000 beneficiaries.
The IOC is also collaborating with the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) and with the Inter-American Development Bank on youth development and employment in Latin America, which includes research on the role of sport in socioeconomic development and in strengthening 21st-century life skills for young people in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Olympism365: the IOC’s strategy to promote sustainable development
Olympism365 is the IOC’s strategy to strengthen the role of sport as an important enabler for the SDGs, reaching tens of millions of people, to improve health, well-being, education, livelihoods and equality through sport.
The collective impact of the sport and community initiatives supported by the IOC and delivered by global and local partners will take centre stage at the Olympism365 Summit: Sport for a Better World, which will take place from 3 to 5 June in Lausanne, Switzerland.
During this invitation-only event, organised by the IOC, representatives from the Olympic Movement, UN agencies, development and financing institutions, civil society and for-purpose business will share best practices and explore new co-investment opportunities.
