Press Releases

AFD Spearheads French Development Aid Actions

The French government allocated €832 million in aid resources to AFD in 2011. AFD leveraged these funds and others to provide €6.9 billion in project and programme financing. The share of French foreign aid deployed by AFD has risen from 5% in 2003 to 31% in 2011.

Africa remains AFD’s priority region, receiving €2.7 billion of funding in 2011.

AFD directed two-thirds of the year’s total funding toward building infrastructure, developing urban areas, and promoting business, industry and trade. It also directed new funds toward education, healthcare and food security.

In 2011, AFD approved funding that will help:

• Improve drinking water supply for 1.53 million people.
• Ensure primary schooling for 4 million children and secondary schooling for 2 million.
• Provide professional training for 430,000 adults.
• Fight climate change by abating 3.8 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year.
• Improve access to electricity for 6.15 million people.

Dov Zerah, AFD chief executive, commented, “Beyond being known for the funding it provides, AFD is renowned for its presence in the field, its ability to mobilize French expertise, its effective partnerships, and its contribution to international discussions about aid issues. We spearhead France’s cooperation actions.”

AFD’s Business Model Consolidation

AFD tailors its aid strategies to beneficiaries’ needs in each region:

• AFD concentrates 60% of France’s foreign-aid monies in sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on agriculture, food processing, infrastructure, education and healthcare.
• AFD has expanded operations in North African and Middle Eastern countries that border the Mediterranean to support recent changes, focusing on employment and professional training.
• AFD offers lightly-subsidized loans to emerging countries, encouraging them to pursue more inclusive and environmentally-friendly development.

Dov Zerah noted, “Consolidating our business model means stabilizing the agency’s level of financing; it should reach €8 billion in 2013. Our challenge is to continue building our human and financial capital, and to reduce operational and financial risks.”

From 29 May to 13 June, the AFD will be organising an “Ideas for Development” cycle of five interdisciplinary conferences on a range of topic areas. These events will provide a framework for discussions on development issues with numerous experts with a professional or personal interest in this field. They are intended as a new forum for debates and meetings between researchers, students, professionals from a wide range of fields, and the general public.

The first three conferences, described below, will focus on Africa’s economy and its performance, opportunities, stumbling blocks and prospects.

2nd conference : "Macro-economics and politics in Africa"

31 May, in partnership with Politique africaine and Afrique contemporaine magazines

Although macro-economics is an area usually addressed as a theoretical corpus developed by economists and technical public policy experts, it can also be seen as above all an expression of politics. This meeting aims to offer a different perspective on macro-economics, as the theatre of social struggles and conflicts between groups that offers material to gain a better understanding of the logic of the State and the mechanisms of power.  A “bottom-up” analysis of the technical aspects of macro-economics can shed light on the emergence of new players, new instruments and new positions and relationships of power – in other words, provide new ways of approaching the realities of African societies.

Speakers
Béatrice Hibou, CNRS, Sciences Po / CERI, FASOPO
Boris Samuel, SciencesPo CERI, FASOPO

To be followed by a debate with the audience. 

Conference on 31 May 2011, 10 am to 12.30 pm at the AFD, 5 rue Roland Barthes, Paris 12°.
Admission free subject to seating capacity and prior registration

Find out more and register for the conference

A rapidly developing method to finance the economy

The work of the conference reviewed the practices, products and volumes of this financing method, which is experiencing rapid development with a billion dollar turnover and an annual growth rate of 30%. It also highlighted the results of a study jointly led by CGAP and AFD.

This conference was organized in the context of the partnership agreement signed last January between AFD and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB).

The exchanges were rich and lively and brought to light the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, which are increasingly requested in a number of countries where AFD operates. They also more clearly identified the needs of beneficiaries, financial institutions and central banks, which play an essential role in terms of the regulatory framework and regulation.

A whole host of innovative experiences in the field 

Several observations were made: the existence of a strong demand for this type of financial product, particularly from the poorest; the proliferation of innovative experiences in the field, which are often poorly identified; the need to launch benchmarking exercises in order to build technical, financial and institutional references. 

A knowledge platform on the Internet

It was agreed that the various donors and institutions concerned, including IsDB and AFD, will support this process by promoting the implementation of information and exchange tools, such as a knowledge platform backed up by a dedicated website, and by holding an annual conference. An invitation was launched for the next one to be held at AFD’s headquarters in Paris. 

Bilateral talks were held between AFD’s Chief Executive Officer, Dov Zerah, and the President of IsDB, Mr. Ali, on the sidelines of this conference, and meetings between the respective operational departments defined practical ways of implementing the agreement, notably the possibility of staff exchanges and the first cofinancing operations in the Mediterranean.

The proposals made by the study aim to reduce the average cost of migrant remittances and to optimize their impact on the development of African countries. They specifically focus on improving linked bank accounts (dual bank accounts for migrants in their country of residence and in their home country with activities coordinated between the banks of both countries), the development of innovative financial products, support for electronic payment technologies and the adaptation of regulatory and legislative frameworks.

What are the lessons learned from the study?

Due to their importance for the recipient communities, the flows of money from migrants tend to remain stable and are less sensitive to changes in the economic climate.

How to optimize remittances and their impact on development

• Reducing the cost of migrant remittances will increase their contribution to development.
• An understanding of the local context is the key to reducing the cost of remittances and informal flows.
• It would appear that the cost of remittances in the Maghreb region and franc zone has stabilized at a level that remains too high.
• While the profile of actors is becoming more diverse, there is still a need to develop the range of services in order to be more competitive.
• An overhaul of regulatory frameworks, with the aim of promoting diversification in the range of services and financial products, would help increase competition and reduce the cost of remittances.
• Four types of financial and technological services and products can contribute to reducing the cost of remittances.
• Actors, services, tools, new technologies…: there are ultimately five areas to be explored in order to expand and strengthen the range of banking and non-banking products and encourage both a reduction in the cost of remittances and co-development.

Eric de Rosny passed away on 2 March in Lyon, the cradle of France’s Catholic Church, of which he was one of the most original figures in recent decades. In 1992, Agence française de Développement awarded him the Prix Tropiques for one of his essays, L’Afrique des guérisons [Healing Africa] (published by Karthala, 1992, “Les Afriques”). Eric de Rosny was a Jesuit and made a name for himself within the community of anthropologists to which he did not, however, strictly speaking belong, by publishing Les Yeux de ma chèvre [The Eyes of my Goat] in 1981 in the famous Plon collection “Terres humaines”. To the very end, he nurtured a demanding and friendly dialogue with researchers, well beyond the borders of Cameroon, where he spent most of his life and which adopted him very early on: for example, Roberto Beneduce, from the University of Turin, and Peter Geschiere, from the University of Amsterdam, held him in high regard and to the very end shared his questioning of the world of the invisible and of the nganga (healers). However, Eric de Rosny was first and foremost a man of faith. It is as such that he studied the Douala society of which he had become one of the twenty-seven old “sages” (beyum ba bato), yet without forgetting where he came from and who he was, in the great tradition of Saint François-Xavier. His capacity to take a distance from a society, the secrets of which he knew so well that Radio Douala entrusted him with a live radio program to dialogue with listeners, reveals the scope of his intellectual itinerary and great vision. Eric de Rosny travelled this path with a humanity marked by decency, modesty, irony and insatiable curiosity. In February 2010, the Catholic University of Central Africa (CUCA) paid him a well-deserved tribute in the form of an international symposium devoted to “medical pluralism in Africa” (published by Karthala in 2011).

Jean-François Bayart

► The front cover is de Rosny’s book for which he was awarded AFD’s “Prix Tropiques” in 1993: “l'Afrique des guérisons" [Healing Africa] 

► The second is a publication that pays tribute to Eric de Rosny and includes the proceedings of an international symposium in Yaoundé in February 2010 in his honor. The book is called "le pluralisme médical en Afrique" [Medical Pluralism in Africa].