THE WORLD BANK
The World Bank is AFD’s second largest financial partner after the European institutions. With this partnership, the two institutions can achieve economies of scale in both project appraisal and participation in more large-scale programs. It also allows AFD to benefit from the high level of political dialogue that the World Bank maintains in its countries of intervention, as well as from the quality of its sectoral studies.
In 2014, the partnership was strengthened by the signing of a cofinancing framework agreement to facilitate project appraisal and implementation. Moreover, since 2015 AFD and the World Bank have been organizing the “Deep Dive” high-level annual seminar. Its objective is to strengthen strategic discussions between the president of the World Bank and the chief executive officer of AFD, as well as between the vice presidents and/or the technical and geographical directors of the two institutions.
In 2024, the AFD and World Bank groups intend to deepen their collaboration with the signing of a new strategic memorandum of understanding and a co-financing framework agreement, to strengthen the existing arrangements. It will now be possible to finance a project through a combination of task delegation and parallel financing, i.e. different contracts for the same project.
Further reading: Agence française de développement (AFD) and the World Bank Group strengthen strategic partnership to address global challenges
Find out more: Overview of the World Bank Group & AFD Group partnership
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
The African Development Bank (AfDB) is AFD’s fourth-largest financial partner and its largest partner among the regional multilateral banks. In turn, AFD is the largest bilateral financial partner of AfDB.
This partnership—essential for AFD, given its priority on Africa—is built around several key sectors: infrastructures, water, sanitation, agriculture, and the private sector. Since the signing of a framework agreement in November 2015, joint work has intensified both at the headquarters of the two institutions and in the field.
The high-level “Deep Dive” seminar was held in Paris in November 2016. Operational seminars on a regional basis, the first of which was held in April 2017 in Abidjan, are moreover helping to translate the commitments made into real cofinancing.
ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has become AFD’s number one cofinancer in Asia. For ADB as well, a cofinancing framework agreement, which was renewed in 2016, standardizes and facilitates the implementation of cofinanced projects. The partnership is currently spreading to new countries of intervention in Asia, as well as to new sectors such as energy efficiency, sustainable cities, and non-sovereign financing.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) are Latin American regional banks. They are more recent but important partners for AFD, as is the new Asian regional bank AIIB.