New Momentum

In 2016, AFD reached a new milestone. Seventy-five years after its creation in London in 1941, it is comprehensively renewing its purpose and its ambitions.
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Children from Medellín, Colombia
© Benjamin Petit / AFD
In its meeting of 30 November 2016, France's Interministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID) expanded AFD's geographical and sectoral mandate. Meanwhile, the National Assembly has increased its resources. AFD is thus becoming more powerful, more open and more flexible, to better meet the South's challenges.

Greater ressources

In 2015, the international community committed itself to a universal vision of sustainable development, as witnessed by the Addis Ababa program on Financing for Development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. The French Government has acknowledged this change in paradigm and endowed AFD with the resources to match this vision and these objectives.

  • Greater equity capital, to grant more loans

To enable AFD to increase its loan capacity, the French Government, all the while respecting prudential rules, practically doubled AFD's basic equity capital, raising it to 5.3 billion euros.

  • Greater resources, to make more donations

The Government has undertaken to increase the resources available to AFD. In 2016, it was given a budget allocation of 847 million euros for donations, grants and loan subsidies. AFD can also mobilize 466 million euros in grants, through resources delegated mainly by European institutions.

  • A facility to support countries in crisis situations

Faced with the major challenges of political, security or migratory crises, a facility to mitigate vulnerabilities and respond to crises has been implemented by AFD since 2016. The facility has funds of 100 million euros per year.

Its purpose is to prevent crises by taking upstream action on the vulnerabilities that fuel them: youth unemployment and underemployment, failing educational systems, tensions between refugees and host populations, and pressure on natural resources.

Greater responsibilities

AFD's objectives were reaffirmed in 2016. They include the fight against climate change, Africa, and support for developing countries. The CICID also underlined the importance of AFD's partnership-based and inclusive method, in which it works alongside the private sector, local authorities, and other donors including the European Union.

AFD has moreover been given new responsibilities.

Our new responsibilities
Governance

SDG 16 (promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and establishing effective institutions) is crosscutting in nature and is essential in order to achieve all the other SDGs.

Governance is one of the pillars of development. Effective, transparent and inclusive institutions are vital in order to provide citizens with public policies and basic services of good quality. Governance is now an integral part of AFD's mission.

Cultural and creative industries

France defends the crosscutting role of culture in achieving the SDGs and puts it at the heart of its development policy, in particular to promote social cohesion and the building of rule of law.

For this reason, AFD is developing a financing offer to support cultural and creative industries in developing countries, especially in Africa.

Education on development and international solidarity

What happens over there has an impact here.... Promoting regulated globalization and more inclusive models of development makes the world safer, fairer and more sustainable for everyone. Awareness-raising on development has become one of AFD's missions.

The aim is to help French people, from a very young age, experience a world in transition…. This will be done in particular through educational and cultural projects targeting the general public.

Migrations
AFD is implementing an action plan on international migrations.

Its objectives are to support the positive contributions of migrations to development, take action on the structural factors that force people to migrate, and coordinate the emergency responses and long-term actions.

Digital technology

Digital technology is playing an increasingly crucial role in guiding and speeding up the achievement of the SDGs in the developing countries, especially in Africa. AFD will therefore step up its support for stakeholders and ecosystems working on digital innovation in developing countries.

New countries

AFD is developing its activity in Cuba and Argentina and is exploring the possibilities and conditions for activity in Ukraine and the Balkan countries. Its calling is to work in all developing and emerging countries.