← Four-layer screen
Methodology · DFI Mandate-Fit & Four-Layer Screen v1.0
How the DFI screen is built
From a 94-asset roster to a defensible, per-institution shortlist — and where the honest limits are. Version v2.137.23
The screen answers the questions a development-finance officer asks, in the order they ask them: is this in our mandate, are the economics real, does it survive downstream risk, and is it financeable now? It composes existing feeds — it originates no figures of its own. Every cell propagates its source feed's three-state badge (Sourced / Derived / Pending / Absent) and carries a machine-readable data-source deep-link to its origin.
The four layers
For a selected institution the roster is passed through four gates, each a strict subset of the one above (a monotonic funnel):
- Mandate — geography gate from the mandate-fit layer (below).
- Bankability-complete — assets with Sourced/Derived published economics, using predicates identical to the cross-asset bankability screener and the flagship report (after-tax / pre-tax / PEA).
- Deep risk-assessed — assets carrying a downstream verdict (operating-flagship coverage) and/or a per-asset E&S safeguards screen (development-pipeline coverage) — two assessment layers over different universes, counted together (community / environmental / jurisdictional-security context).
- Financeable shortlist — the diligence-grade financeability set (sponsor, capital need, funding status, offtake), ranked by DFI capital need then NPV.
An asset that fails a gate drops at that gate and is not carried forward. Where an institution's bankable set exceeds the deep-assessed set, the funnel narrows sharply between layers 2 and 3 — that narrowing is shown, not hidden.
Mandate-fit method
Each institution's criteria are curated from its published mandate and applied to the roster across four dimensions:
- Geography Sourced — three modes.
inclusion_list for institutions that name their countries of operation (e.g. EBRD's six Sub-Saharan designations plus North Africa); continent_wide for African institutions where every roster jurisdiction is eligible by definition (AfDB, AFC, Afreximbank); broad_developing for global DFIs whose developing-country mandate is broad but carries country-specific restrictions not reproduced here (IFC, DFC — flagged confirm-jurisdiction).
- Sector Sourced/Derived — whether mining / critical-minerals is a stated priority, cited to the institution's strategy.
- Commodity criticality Derived — an editorial classification of the asset's primary commodity against a green-transition critical-minerals frame, surfaced only for institutions whose mandate explicitly prioritises critical / transition minerals. The transition / non-priority / context-dependent commodity lists are published in the feed.
- Thematic & exclusion screens Pending — the existence of Paris-alignment and environmental/social screening is recorded where the institution states it; the contents of exclusion lists and instrument-eligibility rules are not reproduced and are marked confirm-with-the-institution. We do not fabricate an eligibility ruling.
The shortlist
The shortlist for an institution is the intersection of all four layers. It is ranked by DFI capital need (High→Low) then by common-basis NPV — the ranking basis is stated on the surface so the order is auditable. Each shortlisted NPV carries its study vintage and a Derived age chip (≤3y / 4–6y / >6y); where the citation carries no year, the cell shows the citation or Absent rather than an invented date. The shortlist exports to a clean print/PDF committee brief that retains provenance and caveats.
Stated limits
- Mandate-fit is a screening signal, not a clearance. A geography-eligible result means the jurisdiction is within the institution's stated countries of operation; it is not a statement that the asset clears environmental, social, integrity, or instrument screening.
- Coverage is the headline DFIs (EBRD, AfDB, AFC, Afreximbank, IFC, DFC). A complete per-institution mandate-criteria matrix — every institution's exact country list and live exclusion lists — is a scheduled deepening; the present layer marks anything not authoritatively held as confirm-with-institution.
- Layers 1–2 cover the full roster (breadth); layers 3–4 cover the curated diligence-grade set (depth). The screen is an origination instrument; the credit decision sits downstream of it.
Cross-references: mandate-fit screen · four-layer screen · dfi-mandate.json feed · bankability-depth method · downstream method