It’s been a busy year for the Agence Française de Développement, the French development agency, as a new president and a new government charts its course on development policy.
President Emmanuel Macron and the new parliament are “very keen and committed behind multilateralism, behind international action, so that’s good news for development policy and good news for the agency in charge of implementing it,” Rémy Rioux, the chief executive officer of AFD, told Devex in a recent interview.
In September, Macron committed to increasing the French foreign aid budget from 0.38 percent of the French national revenue to 0.55 percent of the national revenue by 2022. That is equivalent to the increase in the defense budget.
Rioux sat down with Devex for a video interview to discuss French development policy and his leadership of the International Development Finance Club, a network of national and regional development banks, which has been focused on climate action but is expanding to other areas. The group represents more than $600 billion a year in financing, he said. “All these national development banks know that have to learn from one another, reinforce each other through international cooperation,” Rioux said.
Read more Devex coverage of French aid.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is an Associate Editor at Devex, where she covers the intersection of business and international development, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. From partnerships to trade and social entrepreneurship to impact investing, Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
