Share the page

13th AFD International Conference on Development - Inequalities and Social Cohesion

Conference
Fighting Inequalities
Favela Brésil
événementsAlicia Nijdam. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
When
From Thursday december 6 2018 to Friday december 7 2018

On December 6th and 7th, 2018, the 13th International Conference of Agence Française de Développement (AFD) was held in Paris . For this new edition, AFD decided to focus on inequalities and social cohesion, after having discussed other relevant development issues such as energy in 2014 and the commons in 2016.

Under the High Patronage of Mr Emmanuel MACRON, President of the French Republic

Between 2000 and 2015, extreme poverty was reduced in half. At the same time, inequalities have increased throughout the world, weakening the political, social and economic balances of the most concerned countries.

How can we explain this situation? Have development projects helped to reduce, stabilize or increase inequalities? What should donors do in order to take effective action to fight inequalities? How do such processes influence social cohesion?

For AFD, the reduction of inequality is closely linked to the poverty reduction and to the development model implemented by the partner countries. And in order to achieve so, AFD has decided to make social cohesion one of its strategic goals, for understanding it as the basis of the reduction of extreme inequality.

AFD inequalities © AFD

The “Inequalities and Social Cohesion” conference had as ambition to bring together practitioners and researchers around these issues, and take this debate to the civil society.

The conference took place in Paris over two days:

  • The first one, Thursday, December 6th, was a scientific day with parallel sessions, at AFD.
  • The second one, December 7th, was dedicated to high-level plenary debates open to a wide public and it was held at the Institut du Monde Arabe.

On this second day, international experts, academics and policy makers addressed the following issues:

Besides the great quality of the presentations and debates, this conference enabled participants to establish lasting partnerships on the theme of inequality. Its originality lied in the dialogue between practitioners and researchers from a variety of disciplines around the universal subject that the inequalities represent.

Partner media

Partenaires inégalités 2028
© AFD

The 6th of December was dedicated to a scientific day for which we have received papers investigating the issue of inequality and social cohesion in developing and emerging countries.

Key topics included:

  • Fiscal redistribution
  • Sustainability
  • The link between social inclusion, social cohesion and economic inequality

You will find below the sessions filmed during this day:

 

Download the programme


 

Programme - Friday 7th December 2018

Speakers

This conference brought together internationally recognized researchers, representatives of institutions and civil society. 

  • Nizar Baraka
  • Alicia Barcena
  • François Bourguignon
  • Sylvain Bourmeau
  • Clea Chakraverty
  • Lucas Chancel
  • Christian Chavagneux
  • Shanta Devarajan
  • Farida El Kalagy
  • Alice Evans
  • Gaspar Frontini
  • James Galbraith
  • Gaël Giraud
  • Michel Houdebine
  • Murray Leibbrandt
  • Stefano Manservisi
  • Jean Pierre Marcelli
  • Thomas Melonio
  • Branko Milanovic
  • Didier Pourquery
  • Rémy Rioux
  • Frances Stewart

Download the programme and speakers' biographies

 

AFD programme eng © AFD

Partenaires média

Partenaires média
© AFD

The synthesis is an analytical summary of these debates that carried discussions around five themes:

  • Discussing the relation between growth and inequalities;
  • Understanding how inequality and social cohesion change the way we view development;
  • Analyzing the impact of the emergence of the middle classes on inequalities and social cohesion;
  • Explaining how social cohesion is shaped by perceived inequalities;
  • Supporting the reduction of inequality and promoting social cohesion.

Practitioners and researchers from a variety of disciplines, institutions and geographies were present, such as Gaël Giraud, Jean Pierre Marcelli and Thomas Melonio (AFD); Branko Milanovic (LIS); Alicia Barcena (ECLAC); Shanta Devarajan (World Bank Group); Frances Stewart (University of Oxford); Alice Evans (London School of Economics) and François Bourguignon (PSE). 

This analytical summary allows the public to dive into those interesting discussions and better understand the conclusions derived from these vivid dialogues.

Download the synthesis

Opening Ceremony | Introductive Debate | Panel 1

Panel 2 : Middle Classes

Panel 3 : Perceived Inequalities

Panel 4 : Public Policies | Closing Ceremony

Scientific Day

The 6th of December was dedicated to a scientific day for which we have received papers investigating the issue of inequality and social cohesion in developing and emerging countries.

You will find below the sessions filmed during this day:

See all the Conference's videos by following this link.