The Digital Africa seed fund for innovative entrepreneurship in Africa is off to a promising start, just six months on from its launch. Already, one third of the €15 million for technical and financial assistance has already begun to flow. It’s part of six such programs financed by AFD to support African digital start-ups in their seed stage.

For development projects to deliver results, organizations need financing. But it's not always easy to know where to begin. AFD has developed an e-learning facility dedicated to the procurement of contracts it finances, and it's open to all beneficiaries of AFD financing.

As the pandemic takes hold and the economic ramifications intensify, a number of financial players, including partners of AFD and Proparco, are taking action to support African SMEs - small and medium enterprises. Many are already facing major financial difficulties.

Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Government of Egypt have signed on 10Th June 2020, a new Development Program Financing (DPF) agreement for the development of Egypt’s Electricity sector. The DPF comprises a credit facility of EUR 75 million—the first of two equivalent credit facility operations, with the second one to be possibly approved later this year—and additional grant funding of EUR 1 million for the deployment of effective and targeted technical assistance programs.

While the coronavirus is destabilizing an already fragile African health system, several private health services and innovators supported by Proparco – the private sector arm of Agence Française Développement Group – are taking action to overcome this major health and economic crisis.

In our series on “Shared Innovation”, AFD highlights innovative programs created or developed in our partner countries. The race for a coronavirus vaccine casts into sharp relief existing inequalities of global public health. Tropical diseases affecting more than one billion people attract only a fraction of the funding for illnesses affecting people in the north. But this is changing, with innovative forms of investment and collaboration increasing the affordability of neglected diseases. That could help pave the way to a widely available vaccine for Covid-19.

In our series on “Shared Innovation”, AFD highlights innovative programs created or developed in our partner countries. Today, we focus on a Guinean start-up that has designed in record time, a tablet able to identify Covid-19 symptoms.

A webinar series on urban affairs is already looking at how cities can cope in a post-Covid world. What are the ramifications of Covid-19 on urban development? How has it affected access to health and public services? Just two of the questions debated at the online event, organized by the National Institute for Urban Affairs based in New Delhi, India. It’s in charge of implementing the CITIIS program: City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain, an initiative that has taken on new levels of urgency in the midst of the widening pandemic.

The European Union and AFD have signed an agreement to increase the resilience of natural resources to climate change and reduce the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam through a new facility, WARM.

In our series on “Shared Innovation”, AFD highlights innovative programs created or developed in our partner countries.

Imaginative modes of transport are being harnessed to transport vital medicines, blood tests and supplies in Rwanda, in a partnership that will facilitate care for the ill and the vulnerable. Californian start-up Zipline makes the deliveries by drone – the kind of operation that was once the stuff of science-fiction. As the coronavirus spreads, the delivery system allows medical staff across the country to transport and process blood tests quickly, and thereby keep a close eye on who may be at risk.