In Colombia, the oil and coal mining industry is an important source of fiscal revenues, including royalties. The Sistema General de Participaciones (or General Participation System, GPS) has therefore been set up to organise the transfer of these royalties – that come from the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources – from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit to territorial entities. These resources finance the provision of services in the sectors of education, health, drinking water and basic sanitation, general purpose and special allocations, in the different regions of Colombia. This mechanism aims at ensuring a fair distribution of income, which is essential since spatial inequalities in terms of access to services are still significant in Colombia – as shown by the multidimensional diagnosis of inequalities carried out with the support of AFD. For example, while in urban areas, the secondary education coverage rate is close to 100%, it is 50% in rural areas.

The Strategy for monitoring, follow-up and control of the resources of the GPS is a public policy tool led by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit to carry out control over the management of the resources transferred. This strategy, in implementation for almost 15 years, identifies alerts and cases of non-compliance with the goal of assuring continuity, coverage and quality in the provision of public services. This seeks to prevent and mitigate risks in the provision of social services throughout Colombia, which is essential for the construction of equity across the country, as well as to prevent territorial gaps from widening with regards to the institutional capacities of local governments and to the provision of social services for all populations, regardless of their location. 

This work is also part of AFD's dialogue with the Colombian authorities on tax reform and the reduction of spatial inequalities.

This research project seeks to generate recommendations with the purpose of analysing and strengthening the role of the GPS tool – “the Strategy” – as a mechanism for closing territorial gaps in institutional capacities to provide social services.

Two research objectives have been identified, one in the field of diagnosis, and another in the field of recommendations:

1. Identify the achievements, limitations, and challenges of the implementation of the Strategy in closing territorial gaps in the institutional capacities of territorial entities and in the provision of essential social services.
2. Provide recommendations to strengthen the Strategy in its role of institutional assistance for the closing of territorial gaps.

The project will focus on sectors that receive more resources from the GPS, present more risks in their provision and are the most relevant as essential social services: education, health, drinking water and basic sanitation, and indigenous reservations.

The research methodology will be mixed methods and will include:

• A document review at the level of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the territorial entities selected as a case study;
• A secondary data analysis;
• In-depth interviews with a subsample of the selected territorial entities.

You will find below the research paper related to this project:

Assessing the Impact of the Monitoring, Follow-Up, and Control Strategy on Territorial Inequalities in Colombia (November 2025)

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As part of the revival of participatory forums dismantled under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), this project is an action-research initiative focusing specifically on the implementation of the Brasil Participativo platform. Launched by the Brazilian government in the summer of 2023, this platform aims to facilitate citizen contributions to the creation and improvement of public policies. It was developed using the Decidim web environment — a digital participation platform that, as of 2023, was being used in 30 countries and by 240 institutions.

This project was selected under AFD's call for research proposals on “Commons and Citizen Participation”, which invited proposals exploring how commons contribute to democratic practices and citizen participation; the interactions between commons-based actors and public institutions; and the capacity of commons to shape public action.

The project is part of AFD’s research program on the commons and will contribute to ongoing reflections on the “commons-based approach” — a framework closely tied to issues of democracy and citizen engagement, as it seeks to establish shared, operational governance of the complex challenges faced by public authorities, in partnership with citizens.

This action-research project aims to:

• Analyze the Brasil Participativo initiative over the 2023–2025 period through the lens of the commons approach — focusing in particular on its governance, use, and user-generated contributions;
• Formulate recommendations on the development and governance of the platform, in order to embed principles derived from the commons approach.

Various federal public actors will be involved in the research activities, using a sector-specific approach. Through this sustained dialogue throughout the project, the ambition is to foster stronger connections between public institutions and civil society actors — especially groups that have traditionally been excluded from participatory processes, such as women, people of color, and Indigenous communities.

The project will be carried out by a multidisciplinary team, bringing together academics and civil society actors with expertise in social movements, state–society relations, digital commons, and digital participatory arenas. Public institutions will be involved from the very beginning of the project.

The methodology will combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches — including interviews, document analysis, participant observation, and user data.

The project will lead to:

• Publications, including a final report, research papers, and policy briefs;
• Communication materials co-produced with public institutions and civil society actors;
• The creation of dialogue spaces through co-construction workshops and seminars.

Mozambique was AFD Group's first country of operation in Southern Africa (1981). This historic presence was made possible thanks to a wide range of financial tools mobilized over the years. Today, AFD is supporting the country in its low-carbon trajectory and in the development of basic services.

Produced by AFD's team of country-risk economists, macroeconomic country assessments provide an analysis of development processes in countries in which AFD operates. They also characterize their growth trajectory, and detect economic, social, political and financial vulnerabilities associated with these trajectories. AFD Group is thus in a position to properly measure the challenges and monitor the risks associated with each of its investments.

Emphasis is placed on developing countries, particularly in Africa, for which macroeconomic analyses are rare or infrequent. AFD seeks to complement existing production on the global economic situation, more focused on advanced economies and major emerging countries.

Country-risk analysis is based on a close follow-up over a long period of time and rooted in a fine knowledge of local contexts. Cyclical trends, often highlighted in the news, are always examined in the light of structural trends and of the regional context in which they take place. The aim is to highlight country-specific macroeconomic issues while assessing risks against comparable time- and space-based trajectories.

Country-risk economists place the study of sociopolitical vulnerabilities, the growth model, the viability of public debt, external balances and the soundness of the financial system at the heart of their assessment, and give specific attention to countries' exposure to climate risks.

All of our publications on the macroeconomic situation of Mozambique are available in the MacroDev series.

Access the publications