France's bid to use the Olympics to advance the SDGs

The day before the official opening ceremonies of the Paris Summer Olympic Games, French President Emmanuel Macron and the French Development Agency, or AFD, hosted the first Sport for Sustainable Development Summit, bringing in dozens of heads of state to discuss how sports can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Speaking to Devex before the gathering, AFD CEO Rémy Rioux told Devex: “For decades, we said that sport was not that serious an issue, and probably countries, they have to deliver other investments before having the capacity to do sports.” But the message from Thursday’s summit, he said, is more nuanced. “Sports could be part of the fabric of SDGs way more ambitiously at an earlier stage, and that’s not naive.” Before an audience of International Olympic Committee members and heads of state, global development heavy hitters such as World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous shared the stage with paralympians, IOC President Thomas Bach, and Spanish basketball legend Pau Gasol. Many echoed the Olympic motto: Faster, higher, stronger. But the summit took pains to point out specific areas of development that sports can be mobilized to improve: Health, of course, but also education, the inclusion of women and people living with disabilities, and sustainability. Several participants pointed out that the 2024 Paris games will be the first to achieve gender parity in athlete representation, though paralympian swimmer Ileana Rodriguez’s message about disability inclusion felt less hopeful in Paris, where just one Metro line is fully accessible for those in wheelchairs. Several concrete commitments were made at the summit. Among them: • NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum promised that in partnership with AFD, the organization will build 1,000 basketball courts across Africa over 10 years. • Gianni Infantino, the president of the international soccer governing body FIFA, promised 1,000 soccer pitches worldwide, and to match any built by others. • Antonella Baldino of Finance in Common announced $10 billion to fund sustainable sports infrastructure through 2030 from a coalition of public development banks and other institutions. • Rioux himself announced a research project collaboration between AFD and the World Bank to understand more about the potential for sustainable development through sports. • AFD promised half a billion in investment for sports and sustainable development by the 2030 SDG deadline. • Rioux also announced that Proparco and the International Finance Corporation — the private sector arms of AFD and the World Bank — will collaborate with the private sector to invest in the sports and entertainment industry in Africa. Organizers were looking at not just the imminent Paris Olympics, but at the upcoming 2026 Summer Youth Olympics in Dakar, Senegal, and the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. “We probably will not have all the elements” at the launch, Rioux admitted, but “we hope the Senegalese government, we hope the U.S. government, we hope the organizers of this large competition will take the message very seriously. And I'm sure they will because now they know, now they understand. “And [after the 2026 Summer Youth Olympics in] Senegal, I think probably this message will be different. The urgency will be different, the context will be different. And I hope we'll push that agenda one step further than what we will have accomplished in France with Paris 2024.” The summit closed with messages from two world leaders. While Macron gave the valedictory speech to the crowd, he was preceded by Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye — whose country will host the first modern Olympic event to take place on African soil. Diomaye told his audience that “the Olympic ideal is being trampled underfoot” by war and global inequality. “If we want things to change,” he said, “we need to change the rules of the game.” That includes stopping illicit financial flows and tax fraud, reforming unfair rules of debt and fossil fuel investment for low-income countries, and stopping “an outdated financial system” from perpetuating inequality. He plans to take the Youth Games as an opportunity to strengthen infrastructure systems in Dakar. “Reform is possible if we have the political will to do so,” he said. When Macron took the stage a few minutes later, he said of the need to reform world infrastructure in a more equitable way: “I can but agree with you.”