For decades, economists have debated the role and necessity of public banks in development financing. In 2020, the creation of the Finance in Common System (FiCS), which brings together more than 540 PDBs worldwide, has reinvigorated these debates, placing these actors at the heart of academic thinking and international policy dialogue.

For AFD Group, PDBs are strategic partners. Strengthening financial systems is one of the Group’s top priorities: expanding access to financing, supporting the transition toward more sustainable financial models, and strengthening the resilience and stability of financial institutions. 

In 2024, AFD Group committed close to €3 billion to financial systems and PDBs account for nearly half of the financing devoted to this area. Beyond the volumes mobilized, the challenge is to strengthen the collective ability to better understand how development financing can respond to increasingly complex and interconnected challenges. 

AFD supports the production and dissemination of research aimed at analyzing the role of public development banks in the development financing architecture. 

This activity, which falls under the priority research area “Geopolitics and Development Finance,” is structured around two complementary pillars: 

Since 2020, members of the Global Research Network (GRN) have collectively published nearly 100 original research articles. To structure and consolidate this work, AFD supported the production of the Public Development Banks Reference Book (2025), with support from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the Finance in Common (FiCS) secretariat. Published by Pearson on the occasion of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), this book is a landmark contribution to the academic literature on public development banks.

The program also enabled the development of the first database dedicated internationally to public development banks, co-designed by Peking University, the Fondation pour les Études et Recherches sur le Développement International (FERDI), and AFD. This resource is now a reference tool for researchers, financial institutions, and policymakers. By offering a harmonized typology of public financial institutions and internationally comparable data, it facilitates comparative analysis, strengthens transparency, and helps better track the evolution of public development banks and development finance institutions.

Findings from the program are regularly presented at international conferences and dialogues, particularly at Finance in Common (FiCS) summits. As part of France’s G7 presidency, AFD organized the first conference international academic dedicated exclusively to public development banks in 2026.

Discover also: Public Development Banks: What Research Tells Us, and Why It Matters 

The 2026 research conference provided an overview of current knowledge and research perspectives on public development banks. Drawing on the most recent academic work, a publication prepared following the conference provides a synthesis of the main lessons from the literature and highlights the current challenges these institutions face.

It sets out recommendations for key stakeholders, in particular finance ministers (in their capacity as shareholders and supervisors of PDBs), PDB leaders, and regulatory authorities. These recommendations aim to strengthen the role of public development banks as catalysts for long-term investment in support of national priorities and the delivery of global public goods. 

As a public development bank, AFD must gauge the issues at stake and monitor the risks associated with its financing. To do so, it relies on a team of around ten economists dedicated to analyzing the macroeconomic and financial situation of its various countries of operation. This monitoring feeds into country assessments that inform the Group's operational and strategic decisions in each of its regions of operation. This activity is part of one of AFD's priority research areas, dedicated to macroeconomic diagnostics and forecasting.

Country assessments make it possible to analyze the development processes under way in the countries where AFD operates, to characterize their growth trajectories, and to identify the economic, social, political, and financial vulnerabilities associated with these trajectories. This enables AFD Group to properly gauge the issues at stake and monitor the risks associated with each of its investments.

The scope covered focuses on developing countries, particularly in Africa, for which macroeconomic analyses are scarce or infrequent. The analyses produced are therefore often highly complementary to existing coverage of global economic developments, which tends to focus more on advanced economies and major emerging markets.

The work of AFD's country-risk economists draws on close, long-term monitoring and an in-depth understanding of local contexts. Short-term developments, often highlighted in the news, are systematically examined in light of the structural trends of each economy and its regional context, in order to bring out the macroeconomic issues specific to each country while assessing risks against comparable trajectories over time and across countries.

Country-risk economists place the study of socio-political vulnerabilities, growth models, public debt sustainability, external balances, and financial system soundness at the heart of their diagnostics, and pay particular attention to countries' exposure to climate and natural hazard risks.

The MacroDev collection

Some of the work carried out by country-risk economists, whether country assessments or cross-cutting analyses, leads to publications in the MacroDev collection of the Éditions Agence française de développement. In particular, the special “Semestrial Panorama” issues shed light on the key cyclical and structural issues facing emerging and developing countries.

See all MacroDev publications

The DecoDev webinars

The publication of each MacroDev “Semestrial Panorama” is accompanied by a DecoDev webinar: a session decoding the major macroeconomic trends, followed by three country focus segments.

Discover the DecoDev webinars

The war in Ukraine, ongoing for more than a decade, is generating a growing need for knowledge about the country. Indeed, in order to act, many French public, civil-society, and media actors – including AFD – must draw on solid, up-to-date expertise. Yet while many researchers work on contemporary Ukraine, they are scattered across different research units with varied geographic and thematic focuses. Moreover, a significant proportion of them are in precarious employment situations, which reduces their visibility. The challenge is therefore twofold: to structure and strengthen an academic network, while better mobilizing its members' expertise to address the challenges of the post-war period.

Supported by AFD, the French Ministry of Armed Forces, and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Observatory of Contemporary Ukraine was launched to address a twofold challenge: structuring a network of Francophone researchers in Ukrainian studies, and mobilizing their expertise to better respond to requests from French public authorities. For AFD Group, which operates in Ukraine, this high-quality expertise is essential to inform its action.

The Observatory of Contemporary Ukraine organizes its work around one central question: what are the key issues for understanding Ukraine’s post-war future? Two complementary strands seek to decode the country's profound transformations:

• Military dimension and the transition out of war: the complexity of mobilization and demobilization processes; changes in the practices and means of warfare; and issues relating to reconstruction, demographic trends, and memory work;
• Structural transformations (economic, social, etc.) of Ukrainian society in this context of war.

The Observatory will seek both to better disseminate and to deepen existing work, while encouraging the exploration of emerging topics that remain little documented

See also : Ukraine: Resisting, Rebuilding and Innovating

To carry out its mission, the Observatory will develop a range of tools:

• Scientific monitoring of knowledge produced on Ukraine;
• Mapping of Francophone researchers in Ukrainian studies to build a network of specialists;
• Organization of events to foster dialogue between academia and public authorities and public-interest actors;
• Expertise: facilitating and coordinating the production of studies and other forms of expert input at the request of public authorities;
• Information: producing analytical briefs, organizing scientific and outreach events, and promoting researchers to the media.

Over two years, the research team will produce or organize, in coordination with AFD:

• Three seminars a year, one of which will be hosted at AFD and will result in a policy paper;
• Ten briefs a year for the general public, published on the Observatory of Contemporary Ukraine's website;
• An annual thematic conference, for both academic and operational audiences.;

At the end of the project, a joint discussion will be organized with the Observatory on Reconstruction in the Middle East, another AFD-supported research project on post-conflict reconstruction issues.

• Anna Colin Lebedev, Associate professor of political science at the University of Paris-Nanterre and scientific director of the Observatory on Contemporary Ukraine
• Bertrand de Franqueville, Ph.D. in political science from the University of Ottawa and chief operating officer of the Observatory on Contemporary Ukraine
• Elodie Riche, Research officer, AFD